Review: Kim Richey – Every New Beginning
Kim Richey – Every New Beginning
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Yep Roc Records
Release: 2024
Text: Bert van Kessel
This is the Grammy-nominated Nashville veteran’s tenth studio album in a thirty-year career. She is a much in-demand (co-)writer; she wrote #1 hits for for Radney Foster and Trisha Yearwood. She also contributed great harmonies on Jason isbell’s “Southestern”and Ryan Adams’”Heartbreaker” and many others .
The ten songs were written, or co-written, by Kim Richey over several years. The album was produced by renowned multi-instrumentalist Doug Lancio,whose contributions on especially the piano are masterful throughout, and recorded in Nashville with a core band that included Lancio with Neilson Hubbard plus long-time collaborators Dan Mitchell and Lex Price.
The opening track Chapel Avenue is an beautiful nostalgic look at childhood. Leaving her home state is explored on the beautifully sung, piano-driven Leaving Ohio. There’s a lot of sadness and loneliness in the captivating A Way Around, on which she is helped out by Aaron Lee Tasjan.
The inspired, uptempo Joy Rider is about seeing a kid regularly riding a mini motorbike around her Nashville neighbourhood during the pandemic, and the song perfectly captures his defiant attitude. It was the first song she ever wrote with her then-neighbour Aaron Lee Tasjan.
Floating On the Surface is a demo recorded with co-writer Roger Nichols that couldn’t be improved during the recording sessions. Kim Richey’s superb voice rises to great heights.
The World Is Flat will send shivers down your spine with its painful description of the breakup of a relationship . Come Back To Me has a strong bluegrass feel to it with fiddle and banjo. The slow and emotional Feel This Way contains a striking guitar solo, the piano and B3 organ turn it into a true country soul gem.
The closing track Moment In The Sun displays a strong late-Beatles influence; it is amazing to hear how her voice holds its own in the world of pop too.
With this formidable album Kim Richey demonstrates why she is held in such high esteem by her fellow singer/songwriters. It’s about time all of us do too.
Tracks:
01. Chapel Avenue
02. Goodbye Ohio
03. A Way Around
04. Joy Rider
05. Floating On The Surface
06. The World Is Flat
07. Take The Cake
08. Come Back To Me
09. Feel This Way
10. Moment In The Sun
Website: https://kimrichey.com/news/