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Tift Merritt - Bramble Rose (Lost Highway)

During the late 1990s, musicians like Ryan Adams and Wilco began to break down the notion that country music was all cowboy hats, southern hicks, and weepy, bombastic songs about heartbreak. With the so-called “alt.country” artists, the connection to the country greats of the past--people like Buck Owens, Hank Williams, and Gram Parsons--was reestablished, while the Garth Brooks and Shania Twains continued on in their bastardization of the genre. In 2002, another champion of authentic country music emerged, as Tift Merritt seemingly came out of nowhere to win more converts to the cause. On Bramble Rose, Merritt’s debut album for Lost Highway, there is none of the hipper-than-hip posturing of Adams, nor is there the experimental flourishes of Tweedy & Co. Rather, there is straight ahead country music, sung in the tradition of Emmylou Harris and Patsy Cline, but with definite influences from across the musical spectrum. Based on the strength of the music, as well as the playing, that’s more than enough.

Merritt, a 28 year old beauty hailing from North Carolina, has been writing and performing for about a decade, but only within the past two years, after opening for Ryan Adams and then being signed to Lost Highway, has she started attracting attention. Playing with the same core of players since 1998, Merritt went into the studio last year with celebrated producer Ethan Johns to cut “Bramble Rose,” a selection of 11 songs she had composed.

The album starts off with the breezy, mid-tempo “Trouble Over Me,” an acoustic guitar ballad that suddenly opens up into a harder-edged, electric chorus that would not sound out of place on an early Linda Ronstadt album. The track sets the tone for the rest of the disc, which has classy arrangements that draw on soul, light rock, and southern gospel, but are always firmly rooted in country. Producer Johns has kept the songs free of clutter, which benefits songs like “Virginia, No One Can Warn You,” a galloping song with a strong guitar hook, which is about wanting to shelter a loved one from the trials, tribulations, and risks of life as they grow up and spread their wings (a lyric which almost seems aimed at the singer herself).

While all the songs on the album are terrific, the title track is the most deserving of praise. Not many songs are truly worthy of the label “instant classic,” but “Bramble Rose” is going to be sung and enjoyed 50 years from now as a superlative example of the genre. The slow ballad, featuring a soft acoustic arrangement, complete with mandolin, steel guitar interludes, and Merritt’s heartbreaking vocals, is a direct musical descendant of Gram Parsons’ “Hickory Wind.” It could easily have been sung by the masters that inspired the alt.country movement. The lyrics, which Merritt has described to the Texas Troubadour as “...this unusual metaphor about growing up somewhere and wanting to get away from it, and not being able to...” are, typically, heartfelt and passionate. Merritt bares herself as she opens the song with the lines “The ungrateful few who tangle inside/ Don't care where they're born, they're growing up wild/ The rain makes me thirsty and fighting to go/ My mind turns determined, dark as a storm,” delivering as commanding a vocal as on any other record in recent memory. Even if the rest of the album had been substandard, this track alone would ensure that Merritt received praise.

Another leisurely ballad is “Supposed to Make You Happy,” which perhaps employs the most sparse instrumentation of the entire collection. The lyric is a direct longing for a complete relationship, and a general musing on how difficult that seems to be to attain. Merritt’s delicate voice lilts and weaves around the light melody, augmented occasionally by a whining harmonica, as she sings “Oh my love, was supposed to make you happy all the time.” The song is similar in theme to another treasure: the deliberate, serene “Are You Still In Love With With Me?” an impressive, straight-on country croon bathed in lush harmonies, steel guitars, and a slight hint of echo for an almost historical sound. Just like with the title track, this one sounds as if it has existed for decades, which is part of the reason that Merritt comes across as such an impressive songwriter.

The album ends with the gospel-infused “When I Cross Over,” a song which could be mistaken with a message about crossing from life to death, but which is actually about various transitions in life. In Merritt’s case, the transition is the shuffling from town to town while she’s on tour (“I’m not gonna hang up any pictures/ No numbers taped to the wall/ Suitcase gonna get a little lighter/ I’m gonna unpack all alone”), or perhaps she senses that she is about to cross over from being a local musician to a national figure on the music scene. Whether she sensed that when she wrote the song or not is up for debate, but listening to Bramble Rose, one knows that Tift Merritt has just released the first important album in what will likely be an influential career.

-Neal Alpert