Roots CDs: Amy Rigby - Five Stars - Til The Wheels Fall Off (Spit & Polish)
Recorded in New York, Nashville and East Kilbride, the fourth album from Pittsburgh native Amy Rigby -- and her debut on Glasgow's excellent Spit & Polish label -- underscores her growing reputation as one of alt.country's most distinctive talents. Who, after all, could resist a title like Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again? especially when the song itself unfolds in lines like 'Whatever happened to babe and stud?/Too much KFC and Bud?'A similar straight-talking directness characterises most of Rigby's songwriting, sharpened by wry wit and streetwise irony, yet often conjuring states of ambivalence or confusion, as in the list of (self-) destructive urges catalogued in Why Do I, the all-encompassing jealousy expressed in How People Are, or the mingled celebration and resignation of Breakup Boots. Her raw-edged, throaty vocals range in mood from ballsy to fragile, and some diverse instrumentation -- including clarinet, mellotron, bodhran, harpsichord, viola and trombone -- bring an idiosyncratic twist to her country-folk/roots-rock.
Sue WIlson
Mixing It Up
Seattle Weekly plays jukebox jury with Sir Mix-a-Lot.
by Michaelangelo Matos
In the decade-plus since “Baby Got Back,” Sir Mix-a-Lot has strayed from the public eye, releasing albums sporadically, and, as he points out below, trying to move on from the long shadow cast by “Baby Got Back.” His new album, Daddy’s Home (Rhyme Cartel/iMusic)—his first since 1996’s Return of the Bumpasaurus—is, as usual, a party album that plays off the rapper’s longtime pimp persona, but he spends as much of the album poking holes in the role as playing it straight.
The Jukebox Jury was conducted at the Seattle Weekly offices, with Mix driving in from his home in the suburbs.
Amy Rigby: “Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again” (2003) from Till the Wheels Fall Off (Signature Sounds)Sir Mix-a-Lot: [Laughing at the line “Whatever happened to babe and stud?/Too much KFC and Bud”] That is hilarious. That was very different, because you know, I come from a world where everybody’s bragging on how successful their sexual escapades are, but that was cool and realistic
The New York Post - April 2003
by Dan Aquilante
It's easy to toss Amy Rigby onto the top of the pop box, but when you spend a little time with her heartfelt, incredibly smart new album, "Til The Wheels Fall Off," you realize she is closer to the classic storytelling troubadours of Bleecker Street.
This disc ranks as her best album since her critically acclaimed 1996 solo effort, "Diary of a Mod Housewife."
What makes Rigby so good is that she's able to express the humor and reality of life in song's like "Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?" and the percolating anthem to loneliness, "Even the Weak Survive."
RollingStone - April 2003
3 stars
by Christina Saraceno
Amy Rigby has stood out as one of music's most accurate reporters of the lives of working class women, setting her songs to pop, country and folks sounds. She does it again on her fourth effort, Til the Wheels Fall Off, a collection of tales about women who won't settle down ("Shopping Around"), women who are a little too settled ("Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?") and women who struggle between resignation and hopefulness (every other track). Rigby's strength is her eye for detail and her time-weary voice, which sounds like it might crack just before it dusts itself off and carries on, even and steady. Nowhere is the feeling stronger than on "Don't Ever Change," where Rigby's describes a daughter, utterly indifferent to her mother: "She had chipped nail polish/Writing on her hand/She was nodding her head to her favorite band/Staring into space like she was all alone/But I didn't take it personal/It meant that I was home." The album is full of similar moments of pathos and humor, a delicate combination, but one Rigby has mastered with equal parts goofball charm and poetic grace.
The Philadelphia Inquirer - April 2003
3 1/2 stars
by Steve Klinge
It's hard to write a funny song that isn't just a novelty, but Amy Rigby is a master. Her comically pessimistic, self-deprecatingly ironic songs are as amusing on the 10th listen as they are on the first, in part because she can be as bitter ("Why Do I") as she is sweet ("Don't Ever Change").
Til The Wheels Fall Off is Rigby's best album since 1996's great Diary of a Mod Housewife. She's randy and rambunctious even as she deals with parenthood and a penchant for unreliable men. In rootsy songs that range from the Tex-Mex title track (a duet with Todd Snider) to the jaunty piano pop of "The Deal" to the twangy anthem "Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?" ("We used to be triple x-rated/look at us now, so domesticated"), Rigby dissects desires and doubts with vivacity and humor.
Mojo Magazine - May 2003
4 stars
by Robert Christgau
"Confessions of a Mad Talent"
Amy Rigby is a 44-year -old divorcee with a teenaged daughter. Her mind is sharp, her voice is strong, her hormones are coursing and her breasts are hanging in there. Her demographic needs all the music it can get, and she's been writing songs from its evolving perspective since 1996's inspired Diary of a Mod Housewife - songs so heartfelt, pointed and shapely that by now her marginality is an ageist outrage. Confessing miserably that she's "colder than a frozen waffle," wondering whether she and her beau are "ever gonna have sex again", announcing that "there's no secret technique to separating me from this dress", finding perfection in a wink and some Chuck Berry, she's writing more consistently that anyone else in Nashville and finding musicians who know it. Her fourth album is her best since her first, and they're all terrific. Only a putz would tell her no.
PasteMusic.com - April 2003
Having released three albums of witty, tuneful root-pop to great critical acclaim and a growing cult audience, Amy Rigby's Signature debut Til The Wheels Fall Off has all the makings of a breakthrough. The album is a masterpiece of adult pop, conjuring up classic 60's pop anthems while remaining completely contemporary and offering the sharpest lyrics this side of Elvis Costello. Rigby's autobiographical tunes, by turns funny and poignant, are the stuff of which careers like Lucinda Williams are made, and Rigby is long overdue for some Williams-like recognition.
Ink 19 - May 2003
Amy Rigby has moved to more rustic territory, releasing what is surely her finest album to date. Til The Wheels Fall Off once again proves to the world what a great songwriter Rigby is, and the album broadens her musical scope as much as it consolidates what she's been doing up until this point.
Her cracked, slightly trembling voice adds even more poignancy and profundity to tales about trying to find some truth in a fucked-up world -- songs about coping with the tragedies of everyday living. Musically, she's as individual and idiosyncratic as ever. She's steeped in rootsy Americana, for sure, but takes in everything from the Beatles and Motown to alt-country, psych pop and new wave.
"Why Do I" is an absolutely stunning opening track, somewhat reminiscent of what Wilco was doing a couple of years ago. "Shopping Around" sounds like Elvis Costello in country mode, "The Deal" is a splendid surf-y Beach Boys moment, while the irresistible "O'Hare" echoes Springsteen's 1970's songwriting (if not his arrangements). Although their approaches are very different from each other, Rigby isn't all that unlike pin-up folkster Bright Eyes (note the melodic similarities on songs like "Why Do I" and "Even The Weak Survive."
A compassionate and brave artist, Rigby is one of Americana's finest young songwriters, in the process of carving out a style of her own. Til The Wheels Fall Off is her finest achievement yet and, frankly, the first essential folk-pop album of 2003.
Stein Haukland
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Til The Wheels Fall Off
THE ONION - May 14, 2003
Til The Wheels Fall Off
(Signature Sounds)
"We've been circling each other like a couple of planes at O'Hare," Amy Rigby sings on "O'Hare," using the nation's busiest airport as a stand-in for the suspended-in-midair states of mind that have become the signature of her songwriting. Now four albums into her second-act career, Rigby has become an unrivaled explicator of the ambiguous condition Jerry Lee Lewis diagnosed as "middle-age crazy." Old enough to know better but too restless to settle down, Rigby lays it all out with the album-opening "Why Do I," lamenting a bad decision, presumably just before making it again. The forceful "Shopping Around" captures a displaced single's complaint, while the self-explanatory, country-inflected pop of "Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?" serves as a reminder of how singles wind up displaced in the first place. Since the release of 2000's The Sugar Tree, Rigby has switched labels and found a new town. Til The Wheels Fall Off features traces of Nashville, alongside '60s garage rock and other influences, but it's mostly of a piece with Rigby's past few efforts, with spare instrumentation and surefooted melodies serving her distinctive, frail vocals. Which, as anyone who's heard them knows, is just fine. If anything, Til The Wheels Come Off offers more highlights than usual. The heartbreaking ballad "Even The Weak Survive" reverses the sentiment of a classic Jerry Butler song, finding a truism in its wordplay. But on the whole, Rigby's music has less to say about the struggle to survive than it does about the impossible search for satisfaction, and the paradox of that impossibility creating such satisfying music. —
Keith Phipps
BOSTON HERALD
Til the Wheels Fall Off
( Signature Sounds )
Sarah Rodman - Friday, June 6, 2003
Amy Rigby is the rare witty wordsmith with an equal talent for melody and musicianship. On her fourth solo album, ``Til the Wheels Fall Off,'' Rigby expands her adult alt-country base to include lilting Bacharach-ian pop, Beatles-esque guitar rock and some swampy, organ-drenched garage country. Her observations remain unerring. Rigby looks at her life as a post-divorce, 40-something single mom searching for love with humor, tenderness and unsparing self-awareness. She's especially good with the complicated bits. On the gentle ``Don't Ever Change'' she finds both pain and comfort in the silence of a teenage child. When she wonders ``Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?'' there's no blame, only comic resignation.
BATTERED ROMANTIC: Amy Rigby's tuneful quest goes on
By Ed Bumgardner
WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL
Friday, June 20, 2003
Singer and songwriter Amy Rigby spent years in New York working as a struggling urban cowgirl-slash-pop-folk-phenom-in-waiting before finding her niche. She began writing honestly, with a wry humor, rare sincerity and a sharp sense of melody, about the hard life of a freshly divorced single mother juggling worthless jobs with a continued quest to make music. Diary of A Mod Housewife didn't make Rigby rich, but it did enable her to move to Nashville. There, integrated into the subcommunity of Americana singer-songwriters, she built a formidable critical reputation through a series of fine albums that traced the evolving, dissolving life of the aging American single mother.
Til The Wheels Fall Off - Rigby's fourth disc (discounting a disposable 'best of' package) - finds Rigby mired in a midlife crisis. She is the mother of a teen-age daughter, and a woman with wants and needs who, looking back through her life, adding up triumphs, acknowledging and subtracting failures, discovers that she needs to find contentment, if not love, on her own navigable terms. The disc was overseen by a cadre of producers, including Bill Lloyd (Foster & -- Lloyd) and Richard Barone (The Bongos), and is fleshed out by contributions from such ace-in-the hole talents as Todd Snider and guitarists Will Kimbrough and Duane Jarvis.
But all that is special belongs to Rigby, who writes with continued tuneful confidence and inspiration. She fearlessly tackles her own wishes and fears with a bittersweet mix of humor and frustration - from the wryly clever 'Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again' and 'Why Do I' to the poignant 'Don't Ever Change' and 'Breakup Boots' to the insecurities of 'How People Are' and 'Shopping Around.' In all, Til The Wheels Fall Off is Rigby's best and most revelatory work since Mod Housewife. It's a fine album that looks at a happy life and the glow of love, not as magic and mythology, but as real things, human things, things learned that come and go and, in the end, rest on the mindset of each determined individual.
Rigby remains a battered idealist who is still enough of a romantic to want to ride happily into the sunset with her perfect mate, but who is also savvy enough to understand that some sunsets simple mean the ending of another long, lousy day - and that such days are just a part of an existence that revolves from sunset to sunrise, day after day.
Philadelphia City Paper - June 5-11, 2003
You're never too old to stop growing up, and though calling music "mature" is the equivalent of begging people not to listen to it (Norah Jones fans don't count), there's a wisdom and humor in Amy Rigby's Til The Wheels Fall Off (Signature Sounds) that only comes once you've circled the block a few times. Where Rigby's Diary of a Mod Housewife found her dragging herself kicking and screaming into adulthood, Wheels is more wryly resigned. Rigby's still a romantic at heart, but her pragmatic side seems to be winning the war. Though "Shopping Around" bemoans her inability to be satisfied with any single fella, "Don't Ever Change" finds bliss in a long-term lover's imperfections -- even if "Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?" warns him he'd still better keep up his end of the bargain. Rigby's songwriting seemed to have taken on a generic cast after her move to Nashville from Hoboken, but Wheels reestablishes her as an observational songwriter of the first order. Sam Adams
Northwest Indiana News May 11, 2003
BY TIM SHELLBERG
Amy Rigby "Til The Wheels Fall Off" Signature Sounds Grade: B+
Chalk up yet another winner for Amy Rigby with her fourth album, "Til The Wheels Fall Off." Rigby's first album since 2000's "The Sugar Tree," "Wheels" solidifies Rigby as one of the sharpest songwriters of our time. Since the release of her astonishing debut, 1996's "Diary of a Mod Housewife," Rigby has incredibly juggled poetic mental movies with point-blank emotions on each of her albums, and on "Wheels" she's on top her game with both the former ("Don't Ever Change," the album's title track) and the latter ("Are We Ever Going To Have Sex Again"). Considered by many critics and astute music listeners to be a prominent voice for 30- and 40-somethings, Rigby's ripe for music fans of all ages, and "Wheels" is all the evidence needed (Amy Rigby is scheduled to perform at Schuba's in Chicago on May 17).
Village Voice - Consumer Guide by Robert Christgau
Eating Again
June 2nd, 2003 2:30 PM
PICK HIT - AMY RIGBY
Til the Wheels Fall Off (Signature Sounds)
Much as I love her songs, with this her best batch since her first, I love her singing them more. The way she starts the album by calmly drawling "I'm tired of bein' tired of bein'/Why am I always disagreein' " over murmured accordion and tick-tock percussion is so sturdy and so musical that it still catches me short. Outspokenly ordinary, she's hard on her man, hard on herself, hard on her life, which like most American lives is fairly hard. Although her romantic ups and downs aren't the disaster she believes sometimes, she really would like to know if she's "ever gonna have sex again." Answer—definitely. She's attractive if by some juvenile standards mature, and she feels the love in her and the lust in her at the same time, which always helps. If only the millions of women in her situation had the time and funds to test-drive alt-country CDs, she'd be as famous as Lucinda. A MINUS
NYC singer-songwriter covered by Ronnie Spector and Laura Cantrell
Rigby wowed plenty with her 1996 debut Diary Of A Mod Housewife, which featured Hal Hartley’s favorite son Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. Rigby’s literate, punchy songs are enhanced this time by country nouveau and power-pop types Ken Coomer, Duane Jarvis and Will Kimbrough, keeping her up to speed with everyone from the No Depression crew to lifestylers like Rolling Stone regulars. Standouts include US radio hit “Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?” and “Breakup Boots” which figure Amy as a bard of relationship mess. She’s obviously aiming higher than clique status, too, as country cat Todd Snider guests on the title cut. Those Nashville suits better watch out.
Max Bell
Q Magazine – November 2003 – 4 stars
Frank, funny US singer-songwriter - A strong pop sense hints at this New York City resident’s 90’s girl-group roots, but this, her first UK release, offers an attractive mix of jangly soft-rock and acoustic material, with tasteful decorations from Farfisa organ to subtle psychedelia. But it’s the lyrics that are her trump card. Pointed yet funny and touching (think Aimee Mann, Liz Phair or Jill Sobule), they’re full of killer detail with witty payoffs (“What happened to Babe and Stud?/Too much KFC and Bud”). The straighter songs are less memorable but a necessary balance. A must-hear for Sex And The City fans.
