Album review: Valerie June, Pushin’ Against a Stone (Sunday Best)

On Later… it was her, a guitar and a stop-you-in-your-tracks song that began “I ain’t fit to be no mother/ I ain’t fit to be no wife”.

Here, “Workin’ Woman Blues” becomes a kitchen-sink production and a little of that intensity is lost. Never mind, because as her debut album progresses it becomes clear June has ambition to be more than a dreadlocked Gillian Welch. “Organic moonshine music” she calls it, and no one could argue with that.