Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Album Review: Rachel Farley - The Truth

Rachel Farley is a young female singer that first grabbed my attention about two years ago.  A group of friends and I drove down to South Carolina to see our favorite artist, Brantley Gilbert.  The venue was a bar in Florence and there were two openers.  To this day, I cannot tell you who the middle act was, but the first performer was this young woman.  I remember us being very impressed by this unknown artist, but knowing she had a lot of potential.  Flash forward two years and that woman, Rachel Farley has released another EP and is still just as impressive as that Carolina night.

It would be unfair to try to compare Farley to any of the leading female singers in country music today.  She does not have the innocent tone of Taylor Swift, nor the violent attitude of Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood or Kellie Pickler.  But that does not mean she is inferior to any of these.  She is truly a unique voice, and one that has a pure country tone to it.  In fact, she starts the EP off with a theme more commonly found among the outlaw boys of country.  "Ain't Easy" leads "My granddaddy ran moonshine/ Till the day he died/ Left behind his children/ And a .45/ That outlaw stuff/ Runs through my blood/ I was raised to be tough/ I was born to run".  These are not uncommon sentiments from the likes of Brantley Gilbert, Jamey Johnson or Montgomery Gentry, but it is refreshing to hear it from a woman.

Not only is she an outlaw, she falls for them too.  "Damn I Do" is about her falling for the guy that everybody says she should not.  Despite what those around her say, the guy makes her feel alive, so she is going with it anyway.  This leads nicely into "Place To Land".  The two songs work well back to back as Farley tells about how when she is tired from her Gypsie life, she always has that safe place to land.

Wrapping up the album, Farley make it clear what every country boy knows: if you mess with a country girl, you are going to have to face daddy.  Obviously someone did not get the memo as the guy is now facing the shotgun of a pissed off father.

Rachel Farley is not known now, but if she keeps making music like this EP, she will end up right there with the current leading women of the genre.  I, for one, cannot wait for a full length album from this genuinely outlaw woman. 9/10