Yes,
Lillie Mae (Rische) was the fiddle player in
Jack White's backing band the Peacocks. Yes, it was she who sang "Temporary Ground" so beautifully on Lazaretto. But
Mae is no
White discovery. Though in her mid-twenties, she has been a professional musician since she was a child. As lead singer of Jypsi -- a country, bluegrass, and pop fusion act comprised entirely of Rische siblings -- she had a major-label record deal that netted an album and a Top 40 country radio single.
Forever and Then Some is
Mae's solo debut. Produced by
White, it's the work of a mature talent who knows exactly what she wants. She writes and sings direct, often tender, sometimes harrowing songs in a voice that alternately recalls
Connie Smith,
Dolly Parton, and
Emmylou Harris, with completely original phrasing.
Mae plays guitar and fiddle, her sister Scarlett plays mandolin (and co-wrote four of these eleven songs with
Mae), brother Frank Carter Rische plays lead guitars, and sister McKenna Grace sings harmony. Rische family friends Brian Zohn (bass) and Tanner Jacobson (drums) make up the rhythm section, and there are a host of guests including members of
the Dead Weather,
Old Crow Medicine Show, and
the Howlin' Brothers.
Opener "Over the Hills and Through the Woods" weds outlaw country, bluegrass, and swamp rock under
Mae's high lonesome vocal in a narrative about brokenness. "Honky Tonks and Taverns" weds Bakersfield and Texas dancehall country music as her fiddle sweeps around her vocal, egged on by electric guitar, pedal steel, and mandolin in a swirling two-step. The melody of first single "Wash Me Clean" emerges from Appalachian bluegrass filtered through blues and country.
Mae's lyric grabs the listener and doesn't let go. Her protagonist won't --or can't --repent; she reveals that a ruined love has transformed her into something wholly other than what she once was. This kind of forbidden and lost love provides a theme for most of these songs. The punchy country rock in "Honest and True" offers a heartbreaking account of the emotional consequences of desire lived in the shadows. The jaunty bluegrass in "To Go Wrong" is contrasted by the pessimistic acceptance in its lyric: "...good things are meant to go wrong." (The fiddle fills and mandolin breaks are killer to boot.) Closer "Dance to the Beat of My Own Drum," with its rumbling tom-toms, organ, and droning fiddle, undergird a tribal personal manifesto that weaves through backwoods gospel and swaggering, bluesy soul. It would have made a great opener, but it sums up the album's themes: That this life, its series of choices and circumstances no matter how happy or sad, right or wrong, cannot be apologized for, it just is.
Forever and Then Some is as moving as it is auspicious.
Mae is a singer/songwriter whose embrace of roots musical traditions bodes well for her as she articulates her own vision of Americana. ~ Thom Jurek