The name suggests a winsome folkie waif, but Ms Rose ain’t nonesuch. Irish-English-Italian-Catholic-American of extraction and a descendent of bare-knuckle brawler John L Sullivan, she was born and brought up somewhere between Boston and Salem. If that weren’t enough pedigree, she recorded Come The Storm in a Martha’s Vineyard house where Jackson Pollock used to hang out with his tutor Thomas Hart Benton. All this plus tattoos and album titles like Long Shot Novena.
Rose’s third album doesn’t quite fulfil the promise of such an exquisite phrase, but she’s got a lot going on all the same. Like her peers Lucinda Williams and Amy Rigby, she’s metabolised the vocal lessons passed on from Chrissie Hynde. The roots-rock of the band is offset by idiosyncratic touches (the boulevardier accordion on the subtle, thoughtful ‘Never Be The Same’), and she’s got a persuasive turn of phrase, not to mention a beguiling way of phrasing those turns of phrase, as on the wonderfully titled ‘Stagger Home’, a paean to the balms of mutually drunken love.
‘Ocean Of Fire’, written but never used for Hidalgo, could be Lone Justice’s ‘Dixie Storms’ reprised, suggesting that Rose might yet end up as a tousled and narrow-eyed nu-Nashville interloper. Elsewhere, ‘Nothing But Blue’ is moody dustbowl blues with scratchy VU guitar and a rousing cry of “Mary Madonna/Why don’t you comfort me/I threw a party in my heart for you/But you never came”, and the record’s strongest tune ‘Staying In’ is ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ for the party-pooped and sick at heart.
Come The Storm is an intriguing and often emotional record, although Rose’s songs need just a hair more magic to put her up there with peers like Mr Petty or Ms McKee.