While this album was released at the tail end of last year it’s fitting to mention it here as Amelia White has just embarked on an extensive UK tour playing alongside Carter Sampson. Previous encounters with White’s music found this writer comparing her favourably with Lucinda Williams with her gutsy, blues influenced country music. Rocket Rearview, despite being a product of Covid lockdowns, finds White still rooting around in a similar vein, a bit pared back, at times more introspective but still inhabiting a somewhat dark landscape.
Indeed, the album opens with the brooding Devil’s Going To Eat You Alive, a swampy slouch into voodoo blues rock. Similarly spooky is the quite amazing Waltzing With Your Ghost, a song punctuated by stabs of swooning and then spiky guitars as White revisits the debris of a failed relationship. Edge Of The Blues meanwhile has White singing over a powerful rock surge as she posits herself as an outsider lamenting politicians who are deluded enough to consider themselves Christ like. In The Time finds White inhabiting territory halfway between rap and Talking Heads with a slight David Lynch bent to it.
On a lighter note there are a couple of sublime and light footed numbers here. My Way Home, borne aloft gliding pedal steel, is a song worthy of Emmylou Harris while Beautiful Sun is a gem of a song which just glistens. The dichotomy of January And June lends itself to the best song on the album with White leading the way on another song which glistens quite wonderfully with its speckled and tender guitar parts and an overall sense of almost childlike wonder. Add to this the superbly absurdist tale of an American housewife waving goodbye to the planet via a rocket ship on the title song, surely a contender for a hall of fame of cosmic country songs, and you have what is a quite remarkable album.