Evergreen, the sixth album from rocking Americana singer, songwriter, and guitarist Beth Bombara, is the flip side to her 2017’s Map & No Direction. While that album was admittedly written during a prolonged period of depression, this one finds Bombara comfortable with her vulnerable side, moving forward with a positive outlook. The Michigan-bred, now St. Louis resident found inspiration, as other have, in an isolated cabin the Rockies, thus the album name. She was not intentionally writing a new record, but doing what comes naturally to her, writing. Mostly she wanted these messages heard by someone else.
She didn’t write the entire record there in the cabin, but it provided the skeleton for many of these songs which were fleshed out on the road, in friends’ basements, at soundchecks and in vans while touring behind her previous album. Call it electrified folk-rock or amplified Americana, there’s a sense of movement in the music and lyrics. Mostly it’s a determination to turn the page as evidenced by lyrics like these from “Upside Down” – “Sun hanging loud in a ruthless sky/Still peaking through when I close my eyes/When light refused to shine…24 hours and we’re back around/Same old story, turn it upside down/Leave behind your could’ve beens/And we’ll get going somewhere else.”
The optimistic vibe seems to give way to some political commentary toward the end with “Criminal Tongue” (“All the world’s a cage/So let’s put on a grand display/knock it on its side/With your infinite lies/Try, but never fool me/Now you’re just making a scene”) or in the closer “All Good Things” (“No time like the present/to kill for my attention/So if that ain’t presidential/Than I don’t know what is”). She addressed social issues and racial issues on her previous album so it’s not surprising to see her referencing POTUS 45 here.
Along with Bombara on guitars are Samuel Gregg (electric guitar), co-producer, husband and bassist Kit Hamon, drummer Mike Schurk, and co-producer and friend, keyboardist John Calvin Abney. All band members are listed as co-producers, fitting as they hammered out the album live in the studio in less than a week. Ringing guitars and shimmering keys surround Bombara’s natural vocals and melodic hooks that lean toward pop and rock n’ roll as well as country-rock with the twangy guitars. There’s a crunchy punch to most of these songs. Even “Growing Wings,” which begins with acoustic strumming morphs into a big sound awash with guitars and ebullient background vocals.
Bombara indicates that this is the most fun she’s ever had making an album. It flows naturally, with energy that never lags, held together by Bombara’s animated delivery with sustained chords and drawn-out slide guitar notes that resonate even after the disc stops playing.
