Review: Amanda Shires, The Exchange – ‘This is country music with thorns’

Despite Black Deer festival, despite Taylor and Kacey, Country music gets a bit of a bad rap in the UK.

In the public perception, it’s either nasty, misogynist bro-country or sugar-y sweet tweeness. It’s either big-hat or big-hair.

It’s a shame really because, as Amanda Shires and Jarrod Dickenson effortlessly prove, country music is great.

Dickenson is from Waco, Texas and is the very definition of a laid-back Southern gentleman. Faint of Heart and Prefer to Lose are super slinky, slow burn country rockers.

A Rockabilly twang and a heat haze groove settle beautifully across his short set.

Born to Wander sees him duet with his wife, Claire, as they rip into the stupidity of Spotify – “a song ain’t worth a penny” – with all of the grace and dignity of people who have seen and done it all.

Dickenson’s not some world-weary hack though, he’s genuine and excited, delighted to be playing songs from his new album, Big Talk, to a receptive roomful.

Bamboozled takes an artfully crafted swipe at Trump while With Any Luck is a 70s-flecked, gentle country rocker full of positivity and hope.

As Amanda Shires’ band assemble, they start a rumbling Americana stew, a great conflagration of drums, bass, guitar, keys and, finally, fierce fiddle.

Shires not only has the voice of a late-night-alternate-world Dolly Parton but plays violin like the devil too. The sinuous groove of Parking Lot Pirouette is the first glimpse we get of the remarkable Shires voice.

At turns it’s like a busted down, rough edged angel, then a husky, Emmylou drawl, then a tremulous Dolly quaver, then Susanna Hoffs’ “bedroom voice”. It’s the voice of an artist who has been at this since she was 15. The voice of a Grammy winner.

Her latest album, Take it Like A Man, is an exploration of sexual politics and the place of a woman in the world. It celebrates the strengths but never shies away from the weaknesses and most of the tracks tonight are taken from it.

Bad Behaviour is all feminine sass and unrepressed desire while Hawk for the Dove is powerful and defiant, a promise that she is “serious trouble”.

Rumbling guitar and thumping drums add definitive punctuation around which that voice weaves. This is country music with thorns, not airbrushed and perma-smiling.

Take it Like A Man itself is slower, a huge, stately pop song. Shires is emotion drenched until she picks up her violin and all of her heartbreak and anguish pours forth – a country catharsis.

Empty Cups has some serious emotional charge too. It’s an old skool country tune, up there with the best of them, and is swoopy, sassy and romantic. A tinkling piano only adds to the blue light, torch song vibes.

Lonely at Night could be a long forgotten Carole King tune, the thorns of her voice gently snipped, a 70s sweetness taking over instead. Again, the piano trills beneath it all, adding a further thrill – this feels like a classic.

In 2019 Shires put together The Highwomen to highlight the inequality entrenched in American Country radio. The album featured herself alongside Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby and is a call for intersectionality and solidarity.

The title track of that project is rejigged tonight, one female voice and an acoustic guitar shredding stereotypes and telling untold stories. It’s rapturously received, passion matched to passion.

In almost every article you read about Amanda Shires she is talked of in connection with her husband, with the male bands she’s played with, with the male producers she’s worked with.

What is most noticeable is that Amanda Shires doesn’t need any of that masculinity. She embodies a fierce femininity.

Her voice is absolutely extraordinary – she took the standard Summertime and utterly made it her own – and her fiddle playing a thing of ragged beauty. She is making country great again.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

Read next:

• Review: King Krule, Marble Factory – ‘A moment of mutual adoration between artists and fan’
• Review: Steve Earle, St George’s – ‘The voice of a fallen angel in a room full of ecstasy’
• Review: Maddie Morris, St Georges – ‘A socially conscious songwriter’

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