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Allison Moorer Summons Songs of Resilience, Redemption & Revelation on ‘Blood’ | Album Review

October 23, 2019 Mike Elliott

Allison Moorer
Blood
Autotelic/Thirty Tigers
Buy Here | Listen Below

Sometimes the best way to deal with the trauma of tragedy, is to face it head-on. It won't make the healing easier, but it can be cathartic, helping the pain to be at least manageable. Manageable is what you want, because you're going to need to learn to live with it.

Allison Moorer knows this. She's been living with pain since she was 14 when, early in the morning on August 12, 1986, her father, Vernon Franklin Moorer, shot her mother, Lynn, in front of their house while she and her older sister, singer Shelby Lynne, then 17, were inside. They've both been living with that memory ever since, learning to forgive their father along the way, while finding strength in their bond as sisters, and in their blood as family.

That connection is what Moorer examines in great—sometimes chilling—detail in her new memoir and on her new album, both named Blood. The album is powerful, challenging listening, containing ten songs that explore her family dynamics from the points of view of all involved. The music, produced by Kenny Greenberg (who also handles guitars, bass, and pedal steel), is mostly subdued, acoustic—rightly focusing on Moorer's rich, ardent delivery and raw, confessional lyrics.

Moorer has been confronting her past throughout her career in varying degrees, all the way back to her second album, 2000's The Hardest Part, which closed with the hidden track "Cold, Cold Earth," which explicitly detailed that fateful night in shocking detail. On Blood, however, it's not only no longer hidden, the new version is sequenced as the second track, where it works as a sort of thesis for all the examined emotions that follow. Its arrangement is basically the same, save for a bit more ominous texture from the fiddle played by the fantastic Tammy Rogers.

The swamp-rock-soul of "The Rock and the Hill" details the pain, frustration, and doubt her mother experienced, climaxing in the repeated refrain of "Why?" at the end of each chorus, while "I'm the One to Blame" is framed from her father's point of view. In fact, it's from his pen, as he composed the song before either of his children were born in 1967. 

Co-written with Mary Gauthier, "Heal" is a deep, heartfelt prayer of hope that all the baggage we carry may be a part of us, but won't weigh us down, while "All I Wanted (Thanks Anyway)" is therapy by way of Keith Richards. In it, Moorer addresses a woman's decision to leave—and the strength and acceptance that requires—over thunderous open chords that underscore the tentative feeling of freedom in the lyrics.

The most powerful moment on Blood is "The Ties That Bind," where Moorer asks in its chorus, "Why do I carry what isn’t mine / Can I take the good and leave the rest behind?" Ultimately, Blood is about learning to do just that, finding resolve in the lyric, "I’m strong enough to stake my own claim." Moorer has more than staked her claim, and at best, her story can help us with our own. 

Notable Tracks: "All I Ever Wanted (Thanks Anyway)" | “The Rock and the Hill” | "The Ties That Bind"

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In REVIEW Tags Allison Moorer
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