Georgia’s Charlsey Etheridge doesn’t enjoy the same mainstream cachet as many of her contemporaries, some of whom she’s written songs for, and as such may fly under the radar. This review is an attempt to redress that near-criminal neglect. The truth is that I may have never heard of her if it wasn’t for my gig reviewing music. While there’s nothing especially earth-shattering about her album Scars of Mine, my 2023 would be an infinitely poorer thing if I hadn’t made the album’s acquaintance as the year wound to a close.
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Each of the album’s eight originals sounds as if they are ripped from the pages of Etheridge’s personal biography. Songwriters always run a risk with such material if they don’t studiously police their intentions. Etheridge, however, is adept at making the personal universal and I hear that coming through loud and clear with the album’s first song. “Scars of Mine” throws down the gauntlet in some respects as it places the title song in a lead-off position and shows she means business. The bluesy grit of the performance ably supports this ambition.
“Rhythm of Love”, a single from the release, shows that she’s a bit of a musical chameleon. There’s little, if anything, she can’t do. Jettisoning the blues of the album opener in favor of an acoustic guitar cut from a folk song cloth, violin, and harmonica might leave some listeners a little dizzy but there’s no denying that she pulls it off. She writes about subjects such as love with a clear-eyed vision rather than wallowing in sentimentality.
“Midnight Train” wrestles with a plethora of emotions but that clear-eyed vision remains. It’s much more in the Nashville tradition than other tracks on this release, but there’s nothing prefabricated about it. It isn’t cliché in her hands; instead, she’s taking long-established tropes of the genre and retrofitting them for her uses. “Did You” provides us with another of the album’s most thoughtful compositions and the pensive musical accompaniment proves to be a first-class match for the lyrical sentiments.
She closes the album with a blistering light and shade musical drama entitled “So Long”. The piercing guitar playing alternates between stinging leads capable of peeling paint off your walls and more feel-oriented passages for a song that does a little bit of everything extraordinarily well. You may, like me, go into this track wondering if she can match the musical intensity and she does, but without any overwrought bluster.
Everything comes together in Charlsey Etheridge’s Scars of Mine.
Furthermore, I expect it will keep coming together for her with increasingly impressive results. This is a songwriter and performer hitting her stride in both areas and it makes for a bracing listening experience. She doesn’t shortcut a single thing on this release. It’s a fully realized and personal experience that listeners will relate to without straining for understanding. Moreover, it invites repeated listens and deepens with each new play. I can’t hardly think of higher praise than that and it’s well-deserved.
Chadwick Easton