This album comes from last year but seemed to have slipped under my radar till now. She sounds pure Nashville but Katy Boyd is a native Californian who has spent a good part of her adult life in the UK. A stop-start musical career has revived in recent years with her return/debut album (Ain't No Fairy Tale) getting quite a warm reception. This most recent album came about from Katy meeting guitarist/producer Thomm Jutz (in Belfast of all places) and getting to put the record together in Thomm's Nashville studio. Thomm Jutz is the go-to man of the moment for allsorts of great songwriters and he's made a characteristically tasteful job on this record, embellishing Katy's songs without drowning them in radio-necessary bombast. Sweet touches on fiddle, guitar, mandolin and banjo decorate this record in a manner that enriches the feel of each song.
The songs themselves are in the same sort of field as those of Mary Chapin Carpenter - a wry, contemplative look at real lives. Some songs sound like they could be autobiographical but it's not really important to know whether they are or not. Dysfunctional families, relationships gone wrong, a couple of songs about the lives of travelling entertainers and one about single mothers all add up to a bunch of songs that deal with the rough side of life. Katy tells a story within a song – very much in classic country style – and the expansiveness of her storytelling is pointed up by contrast with the one cover she performs, Steve Winwood’s Can't Find My Way Home. That song is pretty much a masterclass in lyrical minimalism, and it gets a lovely treatment here with some lonesome banjo and fiddle, both sounding pretty mournful.