SISTERLY SIGNIFICANCE
Alabama singer-songwriter sisters Allison Moorer and Shelby Lynne suffered a family tragedy when they were teenagers that left with them with no parents. As a result, they grew up thick as thieves, bonded by blood, and fiercely protective of each other.
Lynne’s 1989 Sunrise debut, at 19, contains the greatest version ever of Floyd Tillman’s 1948 “I Love You So Much It Hurts Me” and that’s saying something when you consider Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, John Prine and Merle Haggard all recorded that song. Moorer’s 1998 Alabama Song debut had a song she co-wrote with Gwil Owen called “A Soft Place to Fall” that will tug at your heartstrings. Robert Redford loved it so much he used it in The Horse Whisperer and it garnered an Oscar nomination.
Between them, they’ve recorded 26 albums, 24 of them stone cold gems. Moorer’s current is a companion disc to her recently-published memoir of the same name. It’s an instant Americana classic… as is the memoir. Her honeyed voice cracks in all right spots. She’s a dead-on singer, almost perfect in her phrasing. She’s soulful, daring and instantly memorable. And when she sings with her sister, like on 2017’s , they drag the genius out of each other. Add an esoteric vocal arrhythmia that fosters an alternative kind of each song. Theirs is a very special kind of communicable enthusiasm. When they feel it, they have the power, and the talent, to make the listener feel it. This is all done without the kind of show-off look-at-me melisma — like singing the word “cat” as if it had eight syllables — that too many artists think is good singing. When these girls open their mouths, universal truth emerges. How many Americana duos — on one album — easily master The Killers, The Louvin Brothers, Dylan, Jessi Colter, Townes Van Zandt, Jason Isbell, Merle, Nick Cave and Nirvana? And that’s just it about these two. The hell with genre rules. “I tell radio people all the time that I don’t give a damn if they play my records or not,” Lynne told this reporter in 1991.
