by Justin Wesley
Somewhere Else, the new album from Columbus, OH-based fireball Lydia Loveless, is a heart-on-sleeve powerhouse of raw emotion, drenched in punk spirit and decked in cowgirl boots, all hammered home with volatile stab-and-twist anguish. Other songwriters and Nashville belles can write songs in this vein, but nobody does it better than Loveless and no band in the genre embraces the ragged edges and high-watt voltage as feverishly as Loveless’ band (Todd May on guitar/vocals, Ben Lamb on bass, Nick German on drums) does here. This is the soul of Patsy Cline reincarnated with a 21st century lust for romance and meaning, backed by a band that can snarls like The Replacements and sways like vintage Loretta Lynn.
Loveless channels an urgency throughout Somewhere Else that is a rare treat in today’s music landscape. Hers is this most impassioned delivery I’ve heard in years, and she swings her aching heart around like a sledgehammer aiming to buckle knees and flood eyes. Somewhere Else is, indisputably, my favorite album so far in 2014, and it’s probably my favorite record of the past several years.
Loveless mines stark emotional terrain from front to back: loneliness, depression, post-breakup confusion, and she engages the turmoil with conflicting emotions that ring true to the spectrum of human experience that always seems to come to life in the goings-on between men and women who fall in or out of love ad nauseam.
The review continues here: No Depression – CD Review: Lydia Loveless “Somewhere Else”