Album Review – Leah Blevins – “All Dressed Up”

Countrypolitan (#510), Classic Country (#510.1), Americana (#570) on the Country DDS. AI = clean.

Take a trip back to a time when olive green and crushed velvet were acceptable architectural accents, bell bottoms were mainstream fashion, and everything indoors smelled like secondhand smoke from long and skinny cigarettes. Steeped in ’70s couture from folk pop to country, Leah Blevins offers a very lush and involved listening experience through her Dan Auerbach-produced new album All Dressed Up.

“Dressed Up” is exactly what you can expect from this album that takes Leah’s simple, but heartfelt expressions sincere to her life experiences and allows Auerbach to put the full force of a Nashville instrument rental company’s menagerie of inventory behind them, from tympani and bongos, to Mellatron, harpsichord, vibraphone, and celesta, to saxophone and who knows what else to make an immersive movement of musical theater.

Though this album is certainly guilty of being more country than anything else, its obsession is with era as opposed to genre, with ’70s soft rock and adult contemporary hues slathered across it like you’re in the back of your mother’s station wagon or minivan on the way home from school listening to the Lite FM radio station in the ’80s or ’90s. Then when you get to tracks like the traditional-leaning heartbreak songs “Lonely” and “Tequila Mockingbird,” it’s their understated nature that makes them so uniquely expressive.

Aiding Dan Auerbach in this ambitious pursuit are some really legendary country music contributors, including Paul Franklin and Russ Pahl on steel guitar, Jim “Moose” Brown” on keys, and David Rawlings on guitar. Every track is co-written by Leah Blevins and Dan Auerbach, and a third revolving co-writer that includes Pat McLaughlin for multiple songs, Daniel Tashian for others, and the late Ronnie Bowman on the final song, “Centerfold.”

The centerpiece is meant to be Leah Blevins and her songs. Originally from Sandy Hook, Kentucky—the hometown of Keith Whitley—Blevins grew up in very rural conditions, sometimes with no heat in the winter, and a mother who fought with addiction, and a politician father who fought to hide the family problems. There is definitely plenty of living that Leah can put into songs, and that’s what she does via the propulsive and driving “Diggin’ In The Coal” and the pining and vulnerable “Hey God.”

Blevins uses a strong sense of perspective and at times cunning wordplay to bolster her writing. “Tequila Mockingbird” might feel like a little cliché as a lyrical hook, but it fits well into the country waltz Leah crafted around it that really exposes the alluring contours of her voice. “Leave Your Baggage At The Door” with its heavy Carole King-style sonic adornment gets its point across about leaving past relationship trauma behind.

All Dressed Up‘s greatest asset is also the album’s ever-present burden, which is the heavy-handed nature of the production and arrangements being the most prominent part of the listening experience, not necessarily Leah’s writing or her vocal performances. If you’ve heard some previous Dan Auerbach productions in the country realm, you’re used to this outcome, along with him walking away with writing credits on all the tracks.

Auerbach takes a very hands-on approach with everything, which certainly makes for an involved, attentive, and diverse listen. All Dressed Up is a fun album to explore and dissect the different little influences that are brought to bear on each song and where they might come from. But is it the best way to present Leah Blevins’ songs to the world? Does it confer her a unique sound all her own? Or is it just another Easy Eye Sound/Dan Auerbach production?

All that said, so many of the most appealing albums these days are period pieces, leaning on nostalgia and past expressions to garner immediate interest and well emotion. These albums go searching for a period in music, and a period in history much more interesting and agreeable than our own. All Dressed Up certainly fits that profile, and presents Leah Blevins and her songs in richly appealing moments.

7.9/10

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Purchase/StreamAll Dressed Up