BettySoo – Heat Sin Water Skin

I’ve listened to this album five times now, and I’m finding it hard to say much about it. But far from being a bad thing, I’m beginning to think it’s because I already feel an infinite familiarity with BettySoo’s latest album, Heat Sin Water Skin. As she puts it so eloquently, it’s “like my favourite pair of jeans”; you just slip on her CD and sink back for a comfortable half hour. Her music is so straightforward, that it is hard not to affiliate it with a sincerity and honesty that you are hard pushed to find in most music.

Her lyrics are not particularly good looking in the traditional sense, and are noticeably devoid of puppies and love hearts; but it’s this absence of purple prose that makes her lyrics all the more amiable. They are simple and apt – take “essential but forgettable as oxygen”. Granted, it’s a bit of a mouthful, and scientific elements aren’t often the premise of a successful chat up line, but this clear-cut eloquence is what her soulful music thrives on.

This album is comprised of lusty vocals and earthy rhythms, combining the melodic steel pedal with roughly strummed acoustics. She’s got the delicacy of Priscilla Ahn and the feminine strength of Dolly Parton – not a combination you get to see every day. It’s gentle Americana at its most relevant; not self indulgent lyrics and guitar driven melodies. But she’s very aware of the genre she’s involved with, and adds a harrowing Hank Williams’ cover, linking her modern country folk songs with their heritage – one which she adopts so well.

Being her third album, this will hopefully be the one to bring her to the attention of a few more fans and spark off a long running career. Whilst I don’t know much about her, she is instantaneously amiable. All her songs are self-penned, and give us an insight to her feelings, which are so representative of everyday life. She doesn’t sing about anything fantastical, just humble emotions that we all feel from time to time.