Album Review: BettySoo ‘When We’re Gone’
by Kim Ruehl for FolkAlley.com
Texas has a way of popping out as many talented story-songwriters as it does prolific patches of bluebells. BettySoo has been among those up-and-coming story-songwriters for the better part of a decade. In that time, her recordings have bounced back and forth from Americana-rocky to intimate and folky, but at the heart of them all is a woman with a fierce eye for detail and an empathic streak that will make your little arm hairs stand on end.
Her latest self-released disc, When We’re Gone, straddles the line between those two realms (Americana-rock and folk) with balance and poise. “100 Different Ways of Being Alone” calls to mind fellow Austinite Kelly Willis, while “Last Night” verges on an Alison Krauss and Union Station vibe. “Love Is Real” could be a Sheryl Crow hit, if Sheryl could write them this well (“the hope for love came and left, come dawn / left you empty-handed and alone”). “Wheels” is a good old-fashioned Texas road song about caring less than you once did, or at least trying to convince yourself to do that, as you drive away from it all. “I’m gonna take it like a man, take these punches where I stand,” she sings, as a slow and steady fiddle line wipes rare raindrops off the windshield.
There’s a lot of loneliness and moving on in this album. But, by the time it reaches the final “Lullaby,” whatever well of emotions that spun the disc into motion, drifts off into a welcoming night sky. “So faint, it almost disappears,” she sings, before lighting into the chorus with some of the purest, clearest long notes. It’s the cello-guitar-and-flute instrumental that closes it out, however, which places careful punctuation at the end of the sentence. As the instruments build into tension, the music feels like a night breeze just blowing by. There is never any real resolution, only an ending that brings with it exactly the amount of melodic catharsis to make you feel like all that’s left is the moving on.
