Song titles like “Gypsy Child”, “Lived and Died Alone”, and “Waitin’ On My Luck To Change” already meant that Tin Star was only ever going to be a country album, however the press or PR companies might want to spin it. Toronto-born, Music City-moulded Lindi Ortega has spent a lot of time being compared to Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, a gracious commendation that nonetheless probably suggests a lack of imagination on the part of her reviewers.

Her previous two albums have both been longlisted for Canada’s Polaris Prize – her last, Cigarettes and Truckstops, just this past July- and still she haunts the fringes of mainstream success, a smouldering spectre in her titular little red boots. All told, a more useful homology might be the Neil Young of After The Goldrush and Harvest: a Canadian singer-songwriter who seized the spirit of a quintessentially Southern music with a striking individuality, and did it damn well.

Tin Star is Ortega’s third album in as many years, and relishes the kind of wicked, waggish and woebegone lyricism that was evident in so much of her last two offerings. Like any country artist worth their salt, Ortega has soul- as the steel guitars jangle and the foot-stomping basslines keep time, she comes through with a tremulous and lustful voice that exalts in multitrack harmonies. ”There will be angels, there will be devils, I will be in between,” she declares on the menacing “I Want You”. “I want you to want me,” she growls, and the lovelorn track howls in response.

Ortega has songs that would lay you down in the hay and cradle you in their arms (the title track), and others that would smash a bottle of whiskey on the saloon bar and kick you in the crotch (“Voodoo Mama”). Tin Star doesn’t play around with the formula, but it’s much better off rollicking through a hot-blooded, swinging set than it is attempting to be some kind of self-conscious alt-indie crossover. With her punk support slots and Camus references, she’s jagged enough to escape the trappings of whitebread CMT-style country, but her blood still runs Nashville red. ”We don’t got fame, no name in lights, no Billboard hits, no sold-out nights,” she sings on “Tin Star” itself. Even if she has them, her star will not be lost- it’ll be right where it should be.