Am I Absent? A review of Lindsay Lou’s Queen of Time
Am I Absent?
a review of Lindsay Lou’s Queen of Time
by Jason Jones
October 2023
Two songs with dobro and beginning with “Nothing" open Lindsay Lou's newest release Queen of Time.
“Nothing Else Matters” is wistful. Jerry Douglas plays a weeping dobro. Lindsay Lou’s gossamer voice explores the tender lyrics, “We were learning how to see / I don’t need to do it over.” The past and future are at play, making a mountain of the moments.
“Nothing’s Working,” a collaboration with Billy Strings that was originally featured on his 2021 album Renewal, starts with Strings’ familiar phrasing on acoustic guitar. Lou takes the lead vocals and Anders Beck paints with foggy dobro the atmosphere in which this haunted house has risen. “She’s feeling dismal / But she’s not the only one.”
A song of levity, a song of respite. “I Can Help” is like offering Cormac McCarthy a glass of Sunny Delight on election day; like dealing a joker in high stakes hold 'em.
“On Your Side (Starman)” evidences the carefully crafted momentum coursing through the album, harnessing a wave formed deep in the bellows of infinity, one highlighted by Eddy Dunlop’s pedal steel and an astral invocation under the sign of Bowie. “Trouble is a pretty word.”
“Love Calls” enters from a supernatural place. The opening “Hello” / “Hey” exchange pokes another needlepoint in time’s tall tale. Mr. Bungle’s Guided by Voices in Nellie McKay’s Candy Jail....What is the pollo asado? It’s chicken. I’m spelling out the genre Americana with black marker on masking tape to put on my forehead to identify myself, but when "love calls, you’re gonna answer.
The title track “Queen of Time” comes strutting, bedraggled, a day wiser, smirking and amused, having sailed clear of another night’s darkness. This is a standing-on-the-shore-in-the-morning song; an acoustic garage jam that rides hypnotic guitar if but for a thrill, and like a coin in water, it sinks directly to the crux of time’s meaning: “Who are you?”
“Rules” is a straight bluegrass number, with Kyle Tuttle on banjo, Royal Massat on upright bass, and Mimi Naja on mandolin. The pearl in its craw is “wondering which home to get back to.”
P.J. George III plays bass, djembe and other instruments on the record. He works out of Nashville, Tennessee now, and has Virginia ties, having studied music at Radford University. He was also a member of the Salem based rock band The Cheap Seats in the early 2000s. Anthony De La Costa on guitars and Alex Bice on percussion form the rest of the band.
Mr. Jimmy Rowland is on Rhodes piano for “Needed,” a polished stone of a tune, smooth in the palm, heavy with the memory of its broken edges. Dominic Leslie plays a graceful mandolin, “quietly and earnest.” “I’m just going to name it and step away,” Lou promises. It’s a cry of desperation and her voice captures it in fine articulation, “a place in time…on the phone for hours…down by the river / I’ve got something to say.”
“Shame” goes electric, featuring the return of Billy Strings on lead guitar. It’s subdued and bright, reminiscent of The Wallflowers. It’s another departure from what came before it.
A dying medium, the telephone call, functions like a Shakespearean ghost in Queen of Time, appearing as the track “This Too Shall Pass.”
The finale “Silent” is an autumnal ballad, illuminated by Phoebe Hunt’s violin and Joshua Rilko’s mandolin. It’s Lindsay Lou’s soliloquy that carries us so far away in bringing it all back home:
I feel myself scattered, wearing thin
Modern culture hasn’t clearly whispered into my ear
About something like this
She has been numb, mute, absent–
Am I absent?
Queen of Time was produced by Dave O’Donnell and recorded at Sound Emporium’s Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee. It was released on September 29, 2023. Learn more at lindsayloumusic.com. <>