Review: Amy Helm – Silver City
Amy Helm – Silver City
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Sun Records
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
With her fourth album, ‘Silver City,’ singer-songwriter Amy Helm has made a personal statement about her emotions and fears in ten sung letters to women in her life and to herself.
“No-one talks about the beauty of age, shame and fear about our past is so common to us, but ‘Silver City’ is about looking back and celebrating how we survived.”, according to Amy herself.
‘Silver City,’ recorded at Levon Helm’s (Amy’s late father) Studio in Woodstock, NY, is produced by Josh Kaufman who is responsible for the beautiful, often sparse orchestration of the songs, which gives Amy Helm the opportunity to bring her beautifully sung stories to the fore.
One of the highlights of the album is If I Was King, a song about Amy’s great-grandmother, who was thrown out of her home by her husband (‘a fire and brimstone preacher’, according to Helm), in the late 19th century and had to survive without her children.
After this emotionally sung and arranged song, Helm realized that all her songs were written as letters to somebody. For example, Hwy 81, is about her life as a touring musician and mother and Mt. Guardian is about being a single mother. Amen Anyway is a deeply emotional song about the loss of life, due to drugs or alcohol.
But the second highlight of ‘Silver City’ is the angelically sung and beautifully arranged title song about divorcing your loved one.
‘Silver City’ is an impressive raw personal statement about emotions and angst, with which Amy Helm establishes herself as one of the great female storytellers in American music.
Tracks:
01. Love Supreme
02. Money On 7
03. Baby Come Back
04. If I Was King
05. Silver City
06. Hwy 81
07. Dear Louisiana
08. Amen Anyway
09. Mt. Guardian
10. Alameda
Website: http://www.amyhelm.com/home