Stranger Me
Amy LaVere doesn’t much care for niceties. She’ll kill her lover, if need be. Not surprisingly then, she opens *Stranger Me*, her first album in four years, with the impatient “Damn Love Song” where she appeases a guy by finally writing a song about him as she walks out the door. “Red Banks” is another dark, twisted love song where a body is taken away by the river. “You Can’t Keep Me” again poises this Southern singer-songwriter as a defiant one-woman show. She doesn’t seem to have relationships so much as episodes with her various lovers. This mental toughness is matched by a backing band that plays as loud, angry and dirty as the songs demand. It’s with a touch of shock that LaVere remolds avant-rocker’s Captain Beefheart’s “Candle Mambo” into her own piece and then turns around and tears up with the airy ballad “Cry My Eyes Out.” *Stranger Me* is an emotionally intense collection that never betrays her unflinching honesty.
Don’t cross Amy LaVere. The Memphis singer-songwriter-bassist-actress can add badass to that long string of hyphens, as she…