 Allison Moorer I'll never be the type of person who would ever get anything out of some shit like "Song For the Dumped" by Ben Folds Five, which I guess makes me a sissy. (But at least I have my hair.) No, after a huge breakup, I dive straight into the warm and welcoming arms of country music. This year, country music served me all too well. There were three albums that I found myself relating to way too much, and needing like alcohol to carry me through. All three were country albums, and The Hardest Part was perhaps the most apropos. I relate to nearly every word on this record, and I think that's maybe a bad thing, seeing as it documents a breakup wherein both parties wind up dead. Ah, well, maybe I'm not such a sissy after all. (What's this, yet another restraining order?!) This is a very curious album, and a bit of a great one. It's sort of halfway between the Nashville radio sound (i.e. slick and pop oriented) and the classic Nashville sound (i.e Tammy Wynette or Connie Smith). The closest comparison I can think of is to Rosanne Cash, mainly the Interiors record. This one is even more brutal, though. Moorer (sister of Shelby Lynne) has created a concept album about her own parents, who separated, and ended up dead when her father turned his gun on her mother, and then on himself. The cool thing about the album is that it documents this scenario with real understanding, as opposed to portraying it in the black and white terms you might be conjuring up after hearing the basic headline version of the story. She really gets inside the hurt and the ambiguity of a breakup in which the love never really ends on either side. The songs are just fantastic, and the curious aspect to the album is that they are so commercial sounding. Which is not to say they're getting any airplay. Too honest, too real, not cutesy enough like "My Next Thirty Years" or whatever. These are songs with real pain built in, performed with sincerity and not watered down for marketing purposes. Personally I think they ought to have gone even grittier and just made an alt-country record out of this, but even as it is, this is definitely bound to be a classic to anyone who is open to real country music. A deep sorrow runs through the songs, with a wisdom that is kind of amazing…even more so considering the singer is the orphaned daughter of the characters being sung about. "It's Time I Tried," "The Best That I Can Do," "Send Down an Angel" – the songs accurately get at the interior struggle when a breakup is just for the best, but when the people don't want to let it go. "Think it Over" gets into some of the anger, "Is it Worth It" gets to the resignation, "Feeling That Feeling Again" gets to the frustration of not being able to really move on. The last track is unlabelled and literally presents the story of the murder/suicide as a plain, Gothic country ballad in the style of the old Johnny Cash murder songs. Moorer sings with understanding and a detachment that is truly amazing. Some of the lyrics are a bit simplistic, but given the rawness of the emotions addressed, that's a forgivable sin. It's the kind of record where if you heard it in the background, you might just think "Oh, that's decent contemporary country," but the more you listen, and the more you know about the reality of it, the more shattering it gets. Even more so if you've ever been in a relationship that ended righteously and inarguably, but left you wondering why anyway.
Review by Wimpempy Tarlisle |