Allison Moorer: The Duel : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For Alabamian Allison Moorer, country isn't music for boots and cowboy hats so much as it is white blues. Moorer's voice is a slow, side-of-the-mouth drawl, one part bourbon, one part molasses. Throughout The Duel, her fifth record and first for indie label Sugar Hill, the singer stalks the beat, just behind raggedly rocking guitars. Most of the songs are like a Southern accent: eight miles an hour, deliberate and very dangerous to underestimate. The rocker is "Melancholy Polly," a tune about a singer, which swaggers with a bar-fight groove and a jagged classic-rock guitar riff. Moorer belts it with both contempt and compassion until it's uncertain whether she's singing about herself or someone she wants to strangle -- maybe that's the point. The deep undertow of her voice evokes bad-ass old boys such as George Jones more than any female singer; and like Jones, as a lyricist, Moorer doesn't let herself (or anyone else) off easy. The devastating "All Aboard" isn't the only recent country song to question the patriotism of Bush's vision of America, but it may be the most artful. With wry sarcasm and a mournful groove, Moorer suggests that watching the wheels of America move these days is less like watching a speeding train than like attending a funeral for a friend.