Mel Parsons is playing the Vic Theatre and Baby’s back, dressed in black/ Silver buttons all down her back. She ain’t Walking the Dog but she plays her own bespoke melancholic Americana.
I wear black on the outside/ ‘Cause black is how I feel on the inside. But then she is not as Unloveable as the Smiths song. She does share some of the songwriting sentiments of Morrissey and Marr.
She’s a Folk singer who has a pure tone voice. She does Americana Country in a stripped back minimalist form. Especially performing solo as this 22-date tour is.
Promoting her Sabotage album released in June this year.
I missed her first promotional concert at Q Theatre as it was sold out. I did see her opening solo performance for Chris Isaak in April. I think she performed at least one song from that album.
Conflating the Carter Family’s When the World’s on Fire and Woody Guthrie’s great American anthem This Land is Your Land.
Opening with songs from the new album, 5432 and Circling the City. Downbeat Americana, equally Folk or Country.
She starts with an electric guitar and switches to acoustic with the title track Sabotage. The recorded version drips of Southern Soul with the tasteful keyboard accompaniment. It is starker here, a hurt you song.
The intimate nature of the theatre, and without a band behind here, it is clearer the influence of the Springsteen Nebraska album. In her songwriting and particularly her delivery tonight.
Closest to that style is Breaking from the Glass Heart album. There is colour in the breaking of the heart.
Parson sings with the affectless nature of a Sara Carter and can approach some of her deeper tones as she got older. The same tonal style that Johnny Cash brought to his first recordings at the Sun studio with Sam Phillips. He never acknowledged it properly, but he did marry the daughter of Sara’s cousin Maybelle.
Folk and Country. Death, murder, jealousy, heartbreak all dominates. Where emotions are kept in check and pain is transformed.
Parsons received the 2024 MLT songwriters award (Best Unpublished Country Song) for Hardest Thing.
I just wanna hear you sing! Positive energy Folk and it won against some stiff competition.
Driving Man is the other song to kick arse. Outlaw Country as it rolls down the highway.
The show is full, and the locals are quiet, as if we are at a Folk club. Which we are in a way. Just up Devonport’s Mt Victoria is the legendary Bunker Folk Music club.
There is quiet inebriation going on as women get (moderately) rowdy and men stay mute.
Parsons confesses that no songwriting influence comes from her family life except one, Tiny Days. She has a host of children, and this may be one way to incorporate them eventually, like the Carter dynasty.
A few more highlights. Don’t Wait is folkie Joni Mitchell in style and the recorded version is a duet with Canadian Ron Sexsmith.
Blame is undercut with sly confessional humour. I blame your mother for every little thing. It is also hiding a world of pain.
I Got the Lonely is NOT inspired by Roy Orbison, but by another Travelling Wilbury, Tom Petty. The closest to a Pop song tonight.
The show concludes with Far Away, off the Drylands album. Close to Old Timey Country in style and it swings.
Mel Parsons is on her working holiday, rolling down the highway, the woman in black blazing through the heartland.
Rev. Orange Peel