Elizabeth Cook
Exodus of Venus
(Agent Love/Thirty Tigers)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
“Love is endangered/life is endeared,” are the first words heard on Elizabeth Cook’s first new full length release in six years. The time between this album and Nashville-based Cook’s previous one found the singer-songwriter navigating some of life’s bumpier moments. Not only did she lose a parent but her marriage to collaborator/guitarist Tim Carroll dissolved. Not surprisingly those experiences appear on this, her darkest, deepest and most emotionally searing — both musically and lyrically — set yet.
The opening title track’s ominous drone sets the swampy tone which, with its driving drums, is informed as much by rock as country. Credit new collaborator Dexter Green; he not only produces but handles the majority of guitars and seemingly provides the album’s largely moody approach, laying down a firm foundation for Cook’s twangy vocals. Tunes like the likely autobiographical “Broke Down in London on the M25” (which implies a mental breakdown as opposed to a physical one) and the menacing “Dyin’” where she repeats “every time I push/ you turn around and shove” ride on a tough, steely groove heavily influenced by Lucinda Williams.
Cook’s deep country roots appear in “Straight Jacket Love” that effortlessly shifts from waltz time to a 4/4 rocker and back, capsulizing this set’s musical direction. But darkness is never far from her mind as is evident on the deliberately propulsive “Slow Pain,” an excruciatingly honest self-portrait of a crumbling marriage (“what’s with the mood/ do you feel rude/ did I intrude”) as Jesse Aycock’s lap steel cuts like a dull razorblade. The upbeat, near jazz/blues of “Methadone Blues,” a continuation of the last album’s true to life “Heroin Addict Sister,” helps you swallow frightening lyrics such as “look at these fools it’s like a welfare line/ good thing being a junkie ain’t no crime.”
Between her biting words, an instantly identifiable voice and music that uses its inherent twang as the bedrock for an often heavy, even dangerous sound, the powerful Exodus of Venus makes few concessions to a larger crossover audience. That’s no surprise to Cook’s fans who expect her gloomier tendencies to overtake the more bubbly personality she frequently projects on talk shows. And it makes this a welcome if particularly edgy comeback that positions the album as Cook’s finest, most riveting and intensely personal work.
