Nashville's Amy Rigby is the latest in a fine tradition of female singer/songwriters who've made classic confessional records. For the uninitiated, "classic confessional record" is music-industry shorthand for a great album hardly anybody buys. Somewhere, a few lonely souls are enjoying Maggie and Terre Roche's Seductive Reasoning,Richard and Linda Thompson's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Lucinda Williams' Happy Woman Blues,Iris Dement's The Way I Should, and Rigby's 1996 solo debut, Diary of a Mod Housewife. On Housewife, Rigby masterfully used country and folk themes to confront a pushing-40 feminine despair: crummy job, crummy relationship, crummy everything, really, but hey, she's got a guitar and goddamn if she's going to feel sorry for herself. So efficient, catchy, funny, and elementally well crafted -- half the songs sounded like old familiars on first listen -- Housewifedeserved each swooning review it got. Everybody said it was a classic confessional record; the lack of sales proved it.
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Saturday, Feb. 10, at 9:45 p.m. at the Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck (at Ashby), Berkeley. Penelope Houston and Pat Johnson open. Tickets are $7; call (510) 841-2082. Rigby also plays Tuesday, Feb. 13, at 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $5; call 861-5016.
Sample of Amy Rigby's "Cynically Yours," from the CD The Sugar Tree.
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So you could hardly blame Rigby for the lyrical bitterness that wove its way into her follow-up, 1998's Middlescence, an album so full of self-loathing that it overwhelmed her musical eclecticism. Now that Rigby's learned the routine -- make a good record, watch it die in the marketplace -- she's done it right: The Sugar Tree is a proud, caustic, and clever return to pure songcraft. Sure, there are bruises: She's trying to get her head around jealousy ("Happy for You"), lingering memories ("You Get to Me"), and just plain feeling used ("Rode Hard"). But the album is never dour -- nearly every song is saved by a wry turn of phrase, Rigby's high-lonesome voice, and the delicate, understated construction. Emotionally, the record ranges from the ice-cold Platters rewrite "Cynically Yours" ("I need you to the fullest extent/ It's feasible for me to be needing you") to "Magicians," which dusts off the old heartbroken folk song and gives both lovers the blame, for once.
In the midst of it all is the album's bar-band, just-for-fun sound -- the freewheeling barrelhouse piano that drives "If You Won't Hang Around," the sparkling, upbeat chords of "Wait 'Til I Get You Home," and the forlorn country guitar of "Let Me in a Little Bit" (which Willie Nelson could do something with). In other words, The Sugar Treehas all the hallmarks of a classic ... well, you know.
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