Album Review: Elizabeth Cook - Welder

Elizabeth Cook could, and probably should, be the face and voice of contemporary mainstream American country music. She's certainly got that classic look that seems a prerequisite in the genre – blonde, perfect figure, the right facial bone structure – and she doesn't help the cause by including a booklet full of fashion shots rather than the thing that sets her apart from the formula: her lyrics.

So the first thing to get clear: there's a whole lot more to Cook than the Loretta Lynn/hillbilly vibe that initial impressions create. Sure, her music is steeped in the various traditions that have fed into contemporary country – hillbilly, Cajun, roots, Americana – but along with the usual bittersweet love songs. Cook presents gritty, honest vignettes of, among other things, dirt poor farmers, fast cars, junkies and, well, her mother's funeral. There's also hilarious self-deprecating ditties about sex, delivered with an uncharacteristically edgy electric guitar courtesy of her husband Tom Carroll.

Cook is harking back to the roots of rock'n'roll as much as she is the kind of country DNA that addressed the early rockers like Presley, Cash, Perkins and, another obvious role model, Dolly Parton. All of which is why she's not on a major label and is following her own independent musical path, despite having no less a producer than Don Was, (his CV includes everyone from the Stones and Dylan to Brian Wilson). Throw in the drummer from Robert Plant's current Band Of Joy and former Oils bass player Bones Hillman, and the formula is well and truly out the window, all of which makes for a diverse and very un-traditional American country album that's still as country as, well, Kasey Chambers.