Self-released

****1/2

Stacy Antonel has travelled a winding and somewhat convoluted road to reach Nashville and this, her debut album. She grew up in the San Diego-area seaside town Ocean Beach, listening to an eclectic musical mix of pop and r&b hits and studying classical piano. Following graduation from UC Berkeley she moved to Buenos Aires, where she landed work contributing vocals to jingles for MTV and Jeep that aired throughout Latin America. She sang in a friend’s electro-cumbia band before returning to California, where she pursued a professional music career singing covers in bars, weddings and local clubs. Around ten years ago she discovered classic country; Waylon, Merle, Patsy and Loretta. Using the moniker Ginger Cowgirl she formed a country band and recorded a self-titled EP at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio C. Two years later, reverting to her own name, she has recorded this debut solo album.

ALWAYS THE OUTSIDER is the product of Stacy’s own growth, evolution and strength, and it also owes a debt of gratitude to the inspiration she takes from the generations of female country artists who came before her. It is a singer-songwriter album at its core, but a remarkably creative and sophisticated one, both musically and lyrically. She navigates the Americana/country environs inhabited by Emmylou Harris, Allison Moorer and Lucinda Williams, and in doing so, proves she’s every bit their equal. Far from just another Americana singer-songwriter. She’s one of the best. It’s not so much the heartbreaking language of the album that makes the record captivating as it is the way she sings it. Yes, there’s plenty of ennui—that difficult-to-describe dissatisfied feeling that Sylvia Plath and Charles Lloyd paid homage to in poetry (perhaps summed up best in Peggy Lee’s Is That All There Is?)—but Stacy Antonel is too self-aware for that feeling to take centre stage. In some ways, this album has been a long time coming. This worldly woman unfurls a lifetime of romantic entanglements and experiences to share with the listener as she treads familiar paths of lost love, regret and doubts territory, but each time brings something—an insight, a melody, a vulnerable voice, a truth—that makes the songs hit home, and hit home hard.

The album opens on a strong note with the classic country lilt of the title song. Drenched in intoxicatingly rich pedal steel, it has a familiar, swing vibe that will get listeners’ toes tapping from the first few notes of Doug Pettibone’s pedal steel. Built around organic instruments and therapy-level introspection, it finds the golden-voiced Stacy in the zone, diving deep into ruminations of her own failings of uncertainty, self-imposed isolation, loneliness and simply not ‘fitting-in.’ Her versatile voice, which can swagger in Patsy Cline’s register as on the danceable Texas Lasts Forever or reach for the low rafters, taking a Tori Amos lilt in the otherworldly Absent Captain, with Steve Peavey’s mandolin and Paul Sgroi’s electric lead to the fore as Pettibone’s pedal steel offers wispy ethereal support way back in the mix. You Can’t Trust Fate emerges as a remarkable storytelling vessel, a sombre amber glow of twangy guitar and gentle percussion pulsing around this sad-edged tale of a romantic encounter. A fabulous, immediately comfortable dive into the elements that made country music an art form in the first place.  

Striking a balance between emotional complexity and tuneful immediacy, Stacy is well-versed in various genres, grounded in her own vision, her own signature talent. There’s an eerie spaghetti-western vibe to Kicking And Screaming, with

glowing guitar work and glistening pedal steel enhancing Stacy’s subtle vocal kiss-off. A jazzy lilt comes to the fore in her vocal tones on Planetary Heartache, creating an after-midnight jazz club scenario in this vintage heartbreaker, which is slightly at odds with its supernatural lyricism. Sounding a little like an outtake from an old Heads, Hands & Feet album, Heartbroken Tomorrow, scampers along like a hare on heat, the upbeat sound belies the heartbreak in her vocal delivery.

Stacy Antonel’s sound is decidedly retro, but in all the right ways. Lingering in the hallowed vocal space between Loretta Lynn’s boldness and Tammy Wynette’s tear-stained pathos, Stacy’s sound is vintage country but there are touches of blues, soul and jazz. A recording that shows the richness and diversity of her varied influences, as you hear her sing these songs with that sorrowful, seductive voice in a certain nonchalant manner, with a faraway look in her eyes, you become entrenched in the black-dirt blues of late-night, rain-drenched streets, pool halls, and furnished rooms by way of Robert Mitchum’s Thunder Road.

www.stacyantonel.com

May 2022