100 per cent Jack White-approved – she’s signed to his label, she played with his backing band The Peacocks, and he produced this debut album – Nashville country music up-and-comer Lillie Mae probably needed to come out of the gates swinging, given the music industry’s propensity for treating so-called proteges with suspicion.
It says everything you need to know about just how accomplished she already is that, to paraphrase the album title, she succeeds and then some.
You’ll struggle to hear jauntier, more sassily defiant songs about heartache and rediscovery than To Go Wrong and Wash Me Clean, but Mae’s obvious debt to the likes of Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris shouldn’t fool you into thinking this is purely an album of good ol’ girl, fiddle-and-pedal steel rockabilly numbers.
There’s genuine depth, relevance, and variety, from Honest and True, with its blues coating and prog-rock sprinkling, to closer Dance To The Beat Of My Own Drum, which is straight-out pop with an almost hip-hop vocal structure.
Unmistakeably Old West, but not so much so that it drives itself into a niche, and elevated by the clarity and lilt of Mae’s voice, Forever And Then Some doesn’t just introduce us to a new songwriting player; it marks White out as an astute judge of talent.
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