Elsewhere: Diverse songs from the alt. country

By GRAHAM REID

Chuck Prophet: No Other Love

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Former guitarist/singer with alt. country rockers Green on Red, Prophet's Hurting Business of a few years back was a cracker. It was occasionally Dylanesque with references in the shadowlands of Tom Waits and Nick Cave, but came with scratching and samples. Real good.

If that album showed him broadening his palette, then this musically brittle sixth solo outing, with sometimes angry-sounding but always wry lyrics, sees the diverse elements of his background come to fruition. The ragged rock or alt. country songs here have slivers of old soul woven through, and there are lyrical references to the Beach Boys and Sissy Spacek.

No Other Love is a soaring, string-supported but minimal ballad with few lyrics other than the title, while What Makes the Monkey Dance is askew Waitsean rock'n'roll. I Bow Down and Pray to Every Woman I See is rural country funk with Ode to Billie Joe in the guitars, distorted Tony Joe White growl in the vocals and North African synth-strings - and it's about a girl who dropped LSD at Disneyland.

That's typical of Prophet, all over the map but pulling special magic together. And with dobro, loops, Wurlitzer, Farfisa organ and accordion alongside gritty guitars, this is as sonically engaging as it is melodically lapel-grabbing and lyrically bent. Another oddie but a goodie.

Label: Elite

Tift Merritt: Bramble Rose

(Herald rating: * * * * )

This unusually named singer-guitarist is from Texas, by way of North Carolina. She says of this impressive major label debut that she wanted to make something in the style of early Linda Rondstadt, Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Raitt. Had she also added in the world-weariness of Lucinda Williams and the purity of Patsy Cline, she may have covered all the reference points reviewers will inevitably note.

Merritt is the sum of all those influences infused with her emotionally fragile and broken-heart narratives, delivered with pristine clarity over excellent backing from her own band, the Carbines (plus Petty's Heartbreaker Benmont Tench on piano), and Ryan Adams' producer, Ethan Johns, doing knob-twiddling and lead guitar.

But is she any good? In a word, yep. She crafts a mature and memorable song (the six-minute, slow-burning Sunday sounds like an instant classic ready for reinterpretation), and delivers with a languid sensuality (take the opener, Trouble Over Me, as evidence). Supposed to Make You Happy is as spare and emotional as a ballad of regret and loss can be.

She slips a little too close to early Sheryl Crow's Stones-style rock (Neighborhood, Bird of Freedom) and a couple of tracks don't stray too far from the melodically familiar, but from the sensitive backings to her affecting vocals, there's plenty to sign up for. A name to remember - Tift.

Label: Lost Highway



Jennifer Warnes: The Well

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Her big album was about Leonard Cohen's famous blue raincoat, wasn't it? But that was yonks ago and since those singular treatments of Cohen's songs she has fallen below the radar.

Come back for this one, though. Acoustic country blues, a touch of Emmylou Harris here and there, the widescreen and sumptuously stringed Prairie Melancholy, an Irish lilt to Too Late Love Comes, fine covers of Waits' Invitation to the Blues, Billy Joel's And So It Goes and the standard You Don't Know Me ... and much more.

A pleasant surprise from someone you could be forgiven for thinking had retired to the country.

Label: Elite