RECOMMENDED RECORD: Mel Parsons: Slow Burn (Cape Road Recordings/digital outlets)

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics.

Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .

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It's tempting to impute meanings onto the title of this fifth album by the much-travelled local artist and Elsewhere favourite Mel Parsons who has moved from country music to the broody and ambitious alt.rock and crafted country-pop here.

Does it refer to a very respectable career which hasn't quite received similar, but long-deserved, recognition as afforded her peers Reb, Nadia, Marlon, Delaney and Tami whom we identify immediately by their first name only?

Perhaps it's simply the title song itself which speaks of recent hard times and getting past them slowly: "What kind of mess I made this into, I'm slow on the lesson, I'm slow on the learn. I guess I'm just a slow burn".

Or maybe slow burn refers to the running order of an album which offers a series of moodily understated firecrackers -- among them the throbbing Already Gone which opens "your poison ran quiet, your poison ran strong" -- until erupting nine songs in with the crackling rock of Tired of Being You, a bitter and drawling swipe at a musician (or message to self?) desperately living on social media: “And of course you're beautiful too”.

There's a strong arc here, from the hint of gospel on the melancholy opener Lights (“the lights can't always be on, you cannot expect I'll always be strong . . . everyone's running forward with their eyes closed”) and the yearningly sensual loss and reluctant resilience of Carry On through the tension-release dynamics of Already Gone and to the hushed romanticism of Still Got Time.

These are songs of bruised love, feeling failure, urgency (the jazz-folk momentum of Headland with L.A. Mitchell on piano) and disappointment on the power-pop of Darkness with hints of Mark Knopfler guitar figures: “When did the darkness crawl into your heart?”.

With bassist Aaron Stewart, her cousin Jed Parsons (drums) and producer Josh Logan on guitar (plus a few guests, notably Naomi Hnat on cello for three songs), Slow Burn distills Parsons' musical story-so-far and adds new textures to an already impressive body of work built over many years and fine albums.

Mel Parsons is in the same class as Reb, Nadia, Marlon, Delaney and Tami, those we identify immediately by their first name only.

So she's simply Mel.

And she's terrific.

Again. 

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Slow Burn is available digitally through bandcamp here with CD and limited edition vinyl editions. 

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