Somewhere Else

It’s no surprise that both *Rolling Stone* and Spin magazines named Columbus, Ohio’s Lydia Loveless an artist who readers need to know. Loveless captures an honesty in her songs and in her performances, demanding that people listen. She plays with her band flawlessly, as if she’s already been around the bar circuit for a lot longer than her 23 years. The electric guitars from Todd May sound like a cross between Keith Richards, Scott “Top Ten” Kempner, and Eric “Roscoe” Ambel of The Del-Lords, with a slicing rhythmic efficiency that’s been at the heart of rock ’n’ roll ever since Richards took Chuck Berry’s licks and worked them into his own signature five-string open tuning. Whether it’s “Wine Lips,” “Chris Isaak,” or “To Love Somebody,” the band comes together to seriously kick out these jams. The album’s opening cut, “Really Wanna See You,” sounds like a Stones song already in progress. Her previous recordings (2011’s *Indestructible Machine* and 2013’s *Boy Crazy* EP) were excellent, but *Somewhere Else* takes her music somewhere special.

Lydia Loveless' songs are based in country, but she tweaks the forms and formulas of the genre with a bleary belligerence that is, more often than not, directed at herself. Her self-destructive streak makes Somewhere Else both a bracing and a deeply harrowing listen.

Somewhere Else, the second album by alt-country singer Lydia Loveless, is a polished package, but was aiming to go—as the title suggests—somewhere else. By stripping off the honky-tonk frills of her debut, Indestructible Machine, Loveless achieves the kind of directness found on Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville, except…

The different shades of longing and desire that are woven through the songs on Lydia Loveless' Somewhere Else constitute a whole world of broken dreams.

Discover Somewhere Else by Lydia Loveless released in 2014. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.