[rating=8.00]
If the title of Jamie Lin Wilson’s first full solo album seems both expansive and inclusive, you can be sure that the heading is actually appropriate. Wilson writes from a knowing perspective, specifically, a life rich in both personal and professional anecdotal experience. A wife, a mother (she was carrying her third child during the making of the album) and an accomplished singer/songwriter who’s proven her mettle for the better part of the past 15 years, she incorporates that expertise and emotion into these reflective ruminations. The results are manifest in an effort as credible and accomplished as any of her better known peers, Emmylou Harris, Martina McBride and Shelby Lynne included.
Wilson began her musical trajectory while still in college. Inspired by a solo set by Natalie Maines during a Dixie Chicks concert she attended while at Texas A&M, she immediately committed to writing songs and performing onstage, first with an ad hoc combo called the Sidehill Gougers (later the Gougers) and eventually with a group of friends who began calling themselves the Trishas. She accumulated an impressive catalog in tandem with these various collaborators, ultimately choosing to release her solo debut, an EP tellingly title Dirty Blonde Hair in 2010. But while it further etched her imprint in the alt-country firmament, no additional qualification is really needed. Holidays & Wedding Rings is as stirring as any set of classic country songs in recent memory, one that’s rich, resolute and chock full of authentic emotion.
In some respects, that’s not all that surprising. With guests that include Wade Bowen (whose shared vocals on the tattered ballad “Just Some Things” affirms the song’s air of remorse and resignation), Jon Dee Graham, Owen Temple, Heather Morgan and Dave Abeyta of the band Reckless Kelly, it reflects Wilson’s Texas ties and the state’s freewheeling designs. However, Wilson is really the one that deserves the credit here. She sets the tone, her authoritative, emotive vocals steering the material from the weary to the resolute. Yet even in the midst of the most downtrodden circumstance, Wilson maintains that resolve. The indomitable “Seven Year Drought” provides a perfect case in point; when its compelling chorus declares “Six years into a seven year drought/I won’t give in/I can’t give out,” there’s little doubt that she has the determination to fight her way forward.
The real truth is that Wilson rarely turns in anything that suggests a narrowly somber persona. There’s more than a hint of defiance inherent in such songs as “Just Like Heartache,” “Moving Along” and “Yours and Mine.” Likewise, the breezy honkytonk that propels “She’ll Take Tonight” and “Nighttime Blues” gives those tracks a certain swagger and sway. Wilson’s credence is the essential element here, the key ingredient that ensures authenticity. After all, it’s one thing to aspire to that goal, but quite another to carry it off. Wilson not only emulates the sound of classic country, she expounds on it as well.
