Trailer Bride
HIGH SEAS
(BLOODSHOT)

Melissa Swingle and Trailer Bride call their potent combination of dark Appalachian folklore and echoing twang " country noir. " And with subjects like a dancing outlaw in West Virginia ( " Jesco " ), a celebrity specter haunting a burlesque house ( " Ghost of Mae West " ), and a mournful lover in Barcelona ( " Barcelona " ), High Seas plays like a series of cinematic vignettes that would give Jim Jarmusch the creeps. Swingle is capable of fine, dark poetry; in " Run Rosie Run, " she depicts a woman trying desperately to keep from being swallowed up in the world around her: " The wind combs the trees of all their debris/They throw down their acorns with glee/And in terror she runs/Jumps at each one/The sky must be angry and hungry today. " And the songcraft matches the lyrics; they fall amid an orchestra of plinking banjos, plodding bowed bass, and raging acoustic rhythm guitars. Scott Goolsby’s thick, atmospheric guitar leads add the final touch. Lines like " I know dust is just thankful dirt/And your love is just thankful lust " are hard to resist when Swingle’s bravado is backed by a band this tight.

Trailer Bride do have a playful side: in the uptempo ode to unrequited love " Itchin’‚ for You, " Swingle sympathizes with a lightning bug that’s flirting with her porch light, " She’s real pretty/She won’t listen/She’s a white-hot 60-watt vixen. " Still, the main draw here is Swingle’s knack for writing seductively gothic lyrics and the band’s ability to match her moods in music.

Issue Date: October 18 - 25, 2001