Kendel Carson - Rearview Mirror Tears

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 20 / 5 / 2007

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Review

Not content with introducing the world to the talents of singer-songwriter and violinist Carrie Rodriguez, Train Wreck label boss Chip Taylor has now released the debut by another fiddle player, 22 year old Kendel Carson. Taylor, of course, has had a long musical career but is probably best known to the majority of us as the writer of such songs as ‘Angel Of The Morning’ and ‘Wild Thing’. His profile has been raised over the last few years by a number of solo albums and four albums he has made with Carrie Rodriguez. He wrote all the eleven songs on Canadian Carson’s debut, two of them with Carson. There are also a further two Taylor penned songs which the duo felt didn’t fit the flow of those eleven songs so they have included them on an accompanying CD. Carson has also had a somewhat varied musical career, despite her young age. She started playing violin at the age of 3 and has been a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and a featured guest soloist with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra. More recently Carson has been playing fiddle with the Paperboys and has toured extensively with them. A meeting with Rodriguez at a workshop lead to Taylor agreeing to lend an ear to Carson’s music; what happened next is obvious, Taylor recognised the budding talent and the pair ended up recording this debut. It’s not the strongest debut ever released. It’s probably not even the best debut album released so far this year but as an introduction to what will very soon be a familiar name on the Americana / Roots circuit it works really well. It’s always good to be in at the beginning of an artist’s career; especially when you just know that, as good and as solid as their debut is, there is without a doubt even better to come. That’s the feeling one gets from listening to ‘Rearview Mirror Tears’. It’s a strong collection of songs just as we have come to expect from Taylor. The playing throughout is exceptional but it is the small things which make this album really special, like the fact that the best song on the album is ‘Ribbons And Bows’, which just happens to be one of the co-writes between Taylor and Carson. What part Carson played in the writing of the song is unclear from the CD credits, but given the lyrical content it’s likely she had a hand in writing the words to that song. The way she sings “There’s millions of young girls crying rear-view mirror tears” comes from the heart. It’s hard to imagine that Carson didn’t have some input into those lyrics with the way she pours her heart out in that song. Having said that, Taylor penned ‘Especially For A Girl’ alone so maybe Carson is just adept at making songs she didn’t write her very own. And Taylor, as we well know, is well-practiced in writing songs from a woman’s point of view. Apart from being so obviously talented at playing the fiddle Carson also shows over these thirteen songs that she is a vocalist worth keeping an ear out for in the future. At the end of the day, talented as Carson is on the violin/fiddle, it all comes down to that voice. Carson is no Lucinda Williams; there’s no roughness to her vocals and while a young Emmylou might be a fair comparison there is a toughness to Carson’s voice, It is not over-sweet like many of her contemporaries. Even on the songs that don’t work so well, where Carson sails too closely into Gretchen Wilson territory, it’s that voice that pulls the songs through. Despite that toughness there’s purity in Carson’s vocals but it thankfully lacks that little-girl-lost sound that often accompanies such innocence. But make no mistake; on songs such as ‘I Certainly Know Why’ Carson makes it clear that you wouldn’t want to cross her. On that song and others like the opening ‘Run To The Middle Of The Morning’ and ‘I Like Trucks’ there’s a live-in- the studio feel ; the sound of the band enjoying what they are playing and it’s hard not to start singing along or to keep those feet from moving. But, as good as those songs are for a Friday evening get together; just now it’s the slower songs that Carson shines on. The aforementioned ‘Ribbons & Bows’ just has to be one of the most heartbreaking songs committed to tape this year. The roughness in Taylor’s vocals highlight just how smooth and special Carson’s vocals are. The same can be said of ‘Take Me Down To The River’; again it’s the way those vocals compliment each other in a way they somehow shouldn’t that steals the show. A debut album that features two of the best songs released so far this year (‘There’s No Angel On My Shoulder’ which appears on the second CD and which Taylor wrote some 40 years ago is simply stunning) is no bad thing and while one can appreciate that Carson wants to show the whole spectrum of her talents on her solo debut (which she does) what I’d give right now to hear a whole album of Carson singing songs where she slows things down a little and where she allows her voice to take centre-stage. ‘Ain’t That A Sun’ is a fine example, where the longing in Carson’s vocals is matched by her fiddle gently weeping away just leaves you wanting more, much more, of the same. With this album and her current touring schedule Carson is going to get a lot of attention over the coming months and deservedly so. This is one young woman who is going to be around for a long time.

Track Listing:-

1 Run to the Middle of the Mornin'
2 I Like Trucks
3 Take Me Down to the River
4 Ribbons and Bows
5 I Certainly Know Why
6 Gold in the Hills (of Saltery Bay)
7 In the Middle of a Think About You
8 Especially for a Girl
9 Child All Over Again
10 Ain't That a Sun
11 Just What Happened to the Moon
12 There's No Angel on my Shoulder (Bonus Track)
13 Who Wants to Ride This Train (Bonus Track)