Eilen Jewell - Sundown Over Ghost Town

Rating: 3/5

Review
Nice but nothing special

I quite like this album.  It's a nice, country-tinged Americana album, with perfectly decent songs, well performed by a good band and sung very well by Eilen Jewell who has a good voice which she uses very well. The thing is, there's masses of decent, well-performed Americana around at the moment and for me, this doesn't really stand out. We are blessed at the moment with a lot of truly excellent women singer-songwriters on both sides of the Atlantic who are producing some really outstanding work (I've listed a few favourites at the end of this review in case anyone's interested.), but I don't think this album really stands comparison with them. There's nothing wrong with it at all and no-one with an interest in this genre could possibly dislike it, but...I've listened to it a number of times now and it hasn't really stayed with me at all and I confess that the last time I actually lost interest half way through and put on something else.

I don't want to put anyone off: Eilen Jewell is plainly a talented artist and it's a perfectly decent album, but for me it just fades into a pleasant but rather unmemorable background.

(Just in case anyone's interested, these are just some of the albums from female singer songwriters in the last two or three years which I think have been really outstanding.  They are, in no particular order:

Mary Gauthier - Trouble & Love
Thea Gilmore - Regardless
Amy Speace - How To Sleep In A Stormy Boat
Emily Barker - Dear River and The Toerag Sessions
Natalie Merchant - Natalie Merchant
Olivia Chaney - The Longest River
Amy LaVere - Runaway's Diary
Sharon van Etten - Are We There
Eliza Gilkyson - Nocturne Diaries
Sarah Jarosz - Build Me Up From Bones
Amanda Shires - Down Fell The Doves
Laura Marling - Short Movie
Alela Diane - About Farewell
Kris Delmhorst - Blood Test

Suzanne Vega – Close-Up Series and Tales From The Realm…
Patty Griffin - American Kid
Anais Mitchell - Young Man In America
Lori McKenna - Massachusets
Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer, Different Park and Pageant Material

Ruth Moody – These Wilder Things)