Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17643 in Music
• Released on: 2005-07-18
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Laura Cantrell has had her songwriting compaired to Dolly Parton and her voice compared to Kitty Wells, neither of which can be a bad thing. This her debut full length album recieved critical aclaim when it was first released. "Not The Tremblin' Kind"'s highlights include much loved versions of The Volebeat's "2 Seconds Of Your Love", Amy Rigby's "The Whisky Makes You Sweeter" and Laura's brilliant ode to country singer Bonnie Owen; "Queen Of The Coast".

Customer Reviews

Don't waste your money
I whish I could say something positive about this record.
I can't. She has absolutely no voice and the music is crap.

A great record by any standards and in any age
As I imagine most people in England did, I got to know about this album via John Peel. There were 3 or 4 Laura Cantrell songs in the Festive Fifty in 2000 and I thought that they were the highlights of that year's fifty.

It was sort of consistent with the theory I'd had, having listened to the Festive Fifty since the mid 80's, that if you got someone in it who wasn't a longstanding `Peel band' (e.g. the Fall, Wedding Present), wasn't a bit of novelty type band (e.g. Half Man Half Biscuit - and don't get me wrong, Half Man Half Biscuit are a top band), wasn't notably `extreme', or fashionable - in other words there was nothing to hang a liking for the music around, then they were likely to be top-draw. The best other example I can think of would be Dreadzone in 1995.

This theory is particularly apt with Not the Tremblin' Kind, as it's the most understated truly great album I've ever heard. Not just that it's fairly sparse in production terms - it's not that far away from what 3 or 4 people could play live in a studio. After all Robert Johnson just had an acoustic guitar, for example. But also because none of the emotion - and there's an awful lot of emotion in this album - is ever really pushed.

I've just written that it's understated, which I suppose you could say it is, compared to most music. But I'm going to directly contradict myself straight away, as understated is not really accurate. What it sounds like is someone singing the songs straight, not trying to underplay anything but understanding, feeling all there is in the song - in life. And here, perhaps, is the elemental quality that Peel was alluding to when he compared listening to Laura Cantrell to listening to Roy Orbison decades earlier.

As another (no doubt seemingly bizarre !) comparison, on Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, on the track `Shadowplay' there's a guitar break that is perfect in its sparsity, not an unnecessary note. And there's just the same quality in the guitar break in the opening eponymous song on Not the Tremblin' Kind. There's something both exhilarating and moving in moments like these - exhilarating because of the perfect structure, moving because of the strong emotion under control - controlled for the greater good if you like.

One of the easier songs of this album to describe is `Queen of the Coast', as a good chunk of the impact comes from the narrative. The story is of a woman singer `pretty at most, but she could keep a room alive, with her catch in her voice and her beehive in her hair'. Well she doesn't make it and life becomes mundane, on the road with a `place at the back of the stage', `looking her age', gets her `heart busted up by husband number 2'. And ends up doing the `washing and ironing and picking up' (which is what the song should have been called if you ask me). Nicely put, but a standard country hard luck tale so far.

And I don't suppose the denouement is that original, but it's all about how it's expressed.

Anyway, she's in a diner one night and the `waitress comes up, with a look in her eyes'. And the waitress had heard her - decades ago - and could `still remember every song in your show'. And at that moment she realises that she's wasted her life.

Next line, `Please help me I'm falling' (the song has all been 3rd person up to that point). Laura Cantrell just goes on with the song, but in one of the next couple of lines it's difficult to make out the usually crystal clear lyrics - there's just the very faintest hint of control slipping. One more chorus and that's it.

First line, next song `Come on baby stop your crying....'. I've got the Festive Fifty recorded for that year, and Peel's words about Queen of the Coast; `As a bloke who cries far too easily than is good for me really, that song has given me more trouble than any other this year'.
Stellar as `Queen of the Coast' is, I'm not sure that it's the best song on the album. `Little bit of you' might get the vote from me. Of course not everything on the album is equally wonderful, `My heart goes out to you' is fair enough as it goes, but to my taste, before the end I'm impatient to get to `Somewhere, some night' (next song). However, a couple of things motivated me to write this.

Firstly, I read some reviews comparing this to other `similar' and more popular artists - if you liked that, you'll like this, etc. Which is fair enough, but I caught the implication that Laura Cantrell should be flattered by the comparison. Well - no.

In my view (and it's just an opinion I know, there's no scientific proof for this) Not the Tremblin's Kind is just about as good as it gets. Not just good as in `one of that year's best alt.country albums'. Good as in one of the best albums ever released in any genre of popular music. I've listened to a tiny fraction of the music that John Peel did, but in this I'm pretty much at one with him - the quote that is generally brought up from him about this is `my favourite album of the last 10 years and possibly my life'. But he also said he didn't really know why.

So that's my second reason. John's no longer around to bang the drum for this and perhaps people think that it was just an eccentricity that he liked it so much, particularly as he couldn't really explain why. Well, I'm not sure that I've made much of a stab at explaining either, but as a minimum, make that 2 eccentrics.

Improves with age
Like many others, I discovered this singer via the Peel tribute album. Most of the songs are sad and melancholic, but achingly beautiful in manner of Hank Williams classics. Particularly moving are Not the Tremblin Kind, Two Seconds, Whiskey Makes You Sweeter and Do you Ever Think of Me. Worth buying for these songs alone.