As a baby, Tami Neilson was cradled by Roy Orbison at a gig where her musician father was the supporting act. Perhaps providence beamed down as the Big O gazed at her infant features. Or maybe that came later, when she opened for Nashville great Kitty Wells as a child performer. At any rate, the stars were aligned. A singing career beckoned, cut from the cloth of classic Americana.
Neilson, who is Canadian, specialises in a punchy retro mix of country, soul, gospel, blues and rockabilly. She does so from her adopted homeland of New Zealand, where she moved in 2007 after marrying a Kiwi. Dire warnings that her US roots music audience would evaporate in the faraway nation of sheep-farming and rugby have proved wide of the mark. Awards and acclaim have piled up down under with each album.
Her fifth solo outing, Kingmaker, opens with moody guitar strums and lavish Spaghetti Western orchestrations. It is a handsome soundtrack for a showdown. A big vocal from Neilson raises the stakes in the song, which is the title track. Her powerful voice challenges the kingmakers of the music business to hold her back. A mighty passage of Shirley Bassey-style belting makes it clear their efforts will prove futile.
The album lays claim to the Nashville archetype of the strong woman. “Could the king of country music be the daughter, not the son?” Neilson demands in banjo-led stomper “King of Country Music”. An actual king of country, Willie Nelson, duets on “Beyond the Stars”, a tender countrypolitan waltz about his and Neilson’s dead fathers. Meanwhile, “Green Peaches” invokes the queenly figure of Bobbie Gentry with vintage country-soul and pointed lyrics about young women being exploited by music industry sharks.
Neilson does not have Gentry’s storytelling skills (few do), but she is a charismatic presence at the microphone, with knockout singing and a sharp ear for phrasemaking. “Keep your flowers, take a cold shower,” she growls in “Ain’t My Job”, a rambunctious blues kiss-off to every annoying man ever to cross her path. She hollers away amid clattering drums and rudely honking guitars, an unstoppable force shredding every immovable object in her way.
★★★★☆
‘Kingmaker’ is released by Outside Music
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