Kimmie Rhodes - Cowgirl Boudoir
Sunbird Records SBD 0020
Kimmie Rhodes’ COWGIRL BOUDOIR is a carefully-crafted work of pure Americana in which the accomplished Texas singer-songwriter presents tales imbued with nostalgia, hope, and yearning that celebrate the human heart in all its grit and beauty. With lyrics that read like an autobiography, Kimmie’s self-penned songs address such universal themes as love, loneliness, searching for meaning and ending relationships that were supposed to last forever. She harks back to a time where songs were simply stories about life, accounts of a musician and of all he/she had gone through to get to where he/she was today. The musical history is not lost on Kimmie and often she does a great service to those roots. As on a motion picture soundtrack, a strong sense of setting and narrative carries the music as it stands passionately in the gaps between hope and failure, effort and success.
Kimmie has the uncanny ability to take deeply personal emotions such as the ones in Me Again and make them resonate with the listener as a shared experience. We must have all had those teenage doubts about just who we were as we tried to fit-in. Drawing from her own life, I found myself smiling knowingly at the line about buying
Eight Days A Week on her 13th birthday. Kimmie’s ability to capture many of life’s pivotal moments with such a simple and emotionally resonate voice makes her stand out as a songwriter and as a performer. She does it over and over again here as she puts her heart and soul into every song, bringing her material vividly to life. Take Always Never Leave, a mournful minor-key masterwork that blends images of transition, desperation and grief in the very best way—rich and evocative, yet leaving enough space for the listener to fill in the blanks with their own back-story. She delicately cuts through to your very heart and soul with the heartrending Don’t Leave Me Like This, offers hope and salvation with Yes and Will You is just achingly beautiful.
Kimmie takes the listener by the hand and eloquently leads them to an intimate, emotional depth that seems to be getting rarer by the day. Each song reveals a piece from her memory, and when connected together, the pieces compose a single love story. The lovely instrumentation and arrangements of COWGIRL BOUDOIR make for a beautiful sounding album. It flows with refined grace and intense force, with the elegance in restraint of Kimmie’s haunting vocals and arrangements enveloping the listener in a sound that is at once eerie and comforting. Kimmie Rhodes is a stellar talent who deserves all the plaudits she receives. It’s not country music, not in the strictest sense of the word; it’s acoustic music, songs filled with genuine music, and several leagues above the majority of singer-songwriters plying their trade these days. While the songs are an intimate look at her past, they’re also a sign of her bright musical future brought fully to life by her whisper-to-cry-to-howl dynamic range and her absolute melodic control. Kimmie Rhodes ... pure genius ... she is phenomenal!
www.kimmierhodes.com
Kimmie Rhodes’ COWGIRL BOUDOIR is a carefully-crafted work of pure Americana in which the accomplished Texas singer-songwriter presents tales imbued with nostalgia, hope, and yearning that celebrate the human heart in all its grit and beauty. With lyrics that read like an autobiography, Kimmie’s self-penned songs address such universal themes as love, loneliness, searching for meaning and ending relationships that were supposed to last forever. She harks back to a time where songs were simply stories about life, accounts of a musician and of all he/she had gone through to get to where he/she was today. The musical history is not lost on Kimmie and often she does a great service to those roots. As on a motion picture soundtrack, a strong sense of setting and narrative carries the music as it stands passionately in the gaps between hope and failure, effort and success.Kimmie has the uncanny ability to take deeply personal emotions such as the ones in Me Again and make them resonate with the listener as a shared experience. We must have all had those teenage doubts about just who we were as we tried to fit-in. Drawing from her own life, I found myself smiling knowingly at the line about buying
Eight Days A Week on her 13th birthday. Kimmie’s ability to capture many of life’s pivotal moments with such a simple and emotionally resonate voice makes her stand out as a songwriter and as a performer. She does it over and over again here as she puts her heart and soul into every song, bringing her material vividly to life. Take Always Never Leave, a mournful minor-key masterwork that blends images of transition, desperation and grief in the very best way—rich and evocative, yet leaving enough space for the listener to fill in the blanks with their own back-story. She delicately cuts through to your very heart and soul with the heartrending Don’t Leave Me Like This, offers hope and salvation with Yes and Will You is just achingly beautiful.
Kimmie takes the listener by the hand and eloquently leads them to an intimate, emotional depth that seems to be getting rarer by the day. Each song reveals a piece from her memory, and when connected together, the pieces compose a single love story. The lovely instrumentation and arrangements of COWGIRL BOUDOIR make for a beautiful sounding album. It flows with refined grace and intense force, with the elegance in restraint of Kimmie’s haunting vocals and arrangements enveloping the listener in a sound that is at once eerie and comforting. Kimmie Rhodes is a stellar talent who deserves all the plaudits she receives. It’s not country music, not in the strictest sense of the word; it’s acoustic music, songs filled with genuine music, and several leagues above the majority of singer-songwriters plying their trade these days. While the songs are an intimate look at her past, they’re also a sign of her bright musical future brought fully to life by her whisper-to-cry-to-howl dynamic range and her absolute melodic control. Kimmie Rhodes ... pure genius ... she is phenomenal!
www.kimmierhodes.com