Wednesday, October 24, 2007 | by nathan

Music Recommendation: Rissi Palmer

So it’s become increasingly rare for me to commit to buying an entire album without first hearing it, or, barring that, knowing the artist well. There is a long list of people whose music I’ll buy just because of who they are, but when it comes to newer stuff, I tend to hold back a little and take a listen; after all, anymore you can at least check samples on artists’ web pages or MySpace pages to make sure you’re going to like it.

Last month Jonathan turned me on to Ghostland Observatory, who are now in my top-10 artists at last.fm (which, by the way, is a huge crock of a website, which is why I never link to it). That was an example of a band I listened to and immediately lurved; I’ve since bought all their albums from iTunes, and am constantly listening to them, especially while running.

It bears mentioning that there are types of music of which I’m automatically skeptical. Country is the biggest one; while I’m still on my country music kick, I still find I can’t listen to country radio because most of it really, truly is utter crap.

So when I read an article the other day about Rissi Palmer, a young black woman who is coming up on the country - yes, country - charts, I thought, "Yeah, I bet." Because I’m just sorta skeptical of the genre. But - a black girl on the country charts? I had to see for myself.

So, I logged on to her MySpace and previewed a few songs, and I really liked what I heard. The lead-off single, "Country Girl," is one of those kinda radio-friendly "Hey, here I am, I’m one of you" songs that most artists release to start them off, but it’s shooting up the charts, because well, it’s catchy.

It’s sort of the weak link on the album, however, as radio singles tend to be. Palmer wrote 9 of the 12 songs on her album, and her voice is clear and powerful. Like all good country music it’s simple and heartfelt without getting bogged down in its country affectation. In other words, it’s good and not stupid. Rissi is soulful, crazy talented, and smart. More so than almost anyone out there right now performing this kind of music.

Standout tracks include "Hurt Don’t Know When to Quit," "Butterflies" and "Sweet Contradictions," though my favorite track on the moment is her blow-me-away cover of Patsy Cline’s "Leavin’ On Your Mind," wherein she undoubtedly proves herself a worthy successor to Patsy’s legacy and stakes her rightful claim on the Nashville scene. Nobody belongs in country music more than Rissi Palmer does right now; if you enjoy the genre at all you’ll like her. It doesn’t hurt that the album is tightly engineered and that the arrangements are exactly the kind of thing that radio has been missing lately: lavishly orchestrated without being ornate, not focusing on a trendy mix of instruments but concentrating as much on the singer as the rest of the musicians. She’s got the chops, no doubt. She deserves success much more than a whole lot of people out there banging drums and instructing Americans to put footwear in foreigners’ rectums, that’s for sure.