REVIEW: Charlsey Etheridge — Scars of Mine (LP)
It’s quite the declaration of confidence for Charlsey Etheridge to lead off her new album Scars of Mine with its title cut. This seething and brooding blues moves at a languid pace for its entirety, but there’s nothing placid about the song’s underlying emotions. It swells at selected points in the arrangement, amassing tremendous power, and you keep waiting for Etheridge to erupt with a blood-curdling scream. It never comes, but you finish listening to the song certain that if things keep going this way for the singer, it’s bound to happen.
URL: https://www.charlseyetheridge.com
It’s because there’s the spark of something greater than mere songcraft in everything she touches. Evidence for that is abundant from the first. She kicks off Scars of Mine with its title track, a tortured and impassioned declaration of identity that throws its arms around the damage she’s sustained and portrays it unflinchingly. It’s easily the bluesiest moment on the release and the chorus brings its subject into the sharpest focus.
She demonstrates her ability to fluidly shift gears with the album’s second cut “Doing Wrong Feel Right”. Etheridge dispenses with the bucket of blood blues posture of the title song in favor of a stylish slice of singer/songwriter fare propelled by intensely eloquent electric guitar playing. The playing achieves an ideal sound for the track at hand and contrasts well with her voice. Another style shift arrives with “Rhythm of Love”. Etheridge transitions her vision in a rustic direction with accompanying violin and harmonica doubling down on the track’s sharply retro vibe.
In the face of the decidedly retro vibe, the song never sounds like a pastiche or a butterfly pinned under glass. She conveys immediate emotional sensitivity with each line and dovetails her voice around the instrumentation with an attentive ear. “Back to You” is the album’s best pure ballad fueled by starkly elegant piano lines and, especially, a crowning guitar solo during the song’s second half that sharpens the song’s effect on listeners to a bloodletting edge. It is a song that Etheridge lives with every fiber of her being for listeners.
There is piano during “Midnight Train” as well, though it offers more color than serving as a lead instrument. Stately drumming, lonesome and elongated sliding guitar passages, and Etheridge’s voice are in the spotlight, however, and they gain added power thanks to subtle shifts in the arrangement. It’s a carefully modulated performance, but never bereft of genuine emotion. The closing number “So Long” flexes more guitar muscle than the aforementioned tracks put together. The emphatic oomph underlying each minute of this performance helps make it one of the best on Scars of Mine and a more than fitting final curtain for the release.
It is impressive how Etheridge keeps that swell of emotion mentioned earlier present throughout each recorded performance. She masters it, harnesses it each cut, and approaches it from different angles. It helps make Charlsey Etheridge’s Scars of Mine one of 2023’s best outings — from anyone, and one well worth revisiting.
Colin Jordan
