Review: Kristina Murray wraps charm with grit on new album, ‘Southern Ambrosia’

While her father only left behind “a bag of power tools and a couple old, busted pickup trucks,” Kristina Murray was blessed (or cursed, depending on the day) with “a stubborn head, steady heart and strong blood,” as she hums in sweet vibrations with “Strong Blood.” It’s the backbone from her sophomore record (out this Friday), which extracts its name from the song’s vibrant, scene-scoring opening line: “Eatin’ a cling peach, over the kitchen sink / Southern ambrosia…” Her voice glistens with a delightful lushness and rose-tinted romanticism of the past in all its flavors, also referencing The Allman Brothers’ 1972 record, Eat a Peach. It’s just her luck, too, that her star is glowing brighter at just the right moment and that we’ve been living in a time when Americana music is even more mainstream than mainstream is. Southern Ambrosia ⎯⎯ often swaying in potent, slow-flooding melancholy of days gone by, her faded youth or the current state of the world’s utter bedlam, other times staging robust story-songs about drug abuse and addiction with razor-sharp compassion ⎯⎯ waxes starlit in the effervescent glow of Eddie Arnold and Patsy Cline, while also clinging to the storytelling bite of Keith Whitley and Patty Loveless.

A wild child of southern Georgia, Murray shades her stories with a ripe earnestness, and her vocal choices are equal parts intoxicating buzz, incisive clarity and salt-of-the-earth salvation. “When you’re dead and gone / There’s nothing that they can steal / I know I don’t know much / But this one’s for a fact / The only thing workin’ hard will get you / Is nothing but a worn out back,” she sings on the weepy prayer “Potter’s Field,” brandishing her fear for the hereafter with what is tangible and falling through her fingertips in this moment. “Made in America,” kicking off the record, assures the listener that while she’s got her pain stitched in fringed outlines onto her jacket, she’s “learned how to fight and drink and pray and live right through the pain,” as best as she can. She’s a human being like the rest of us, and that is a hill she both dies on and one which thickens her resolve to get up and live.

“The Ballad of Angel and Donnie” booms through the speakers with scatterbrained guts and grit of the honky-tonk limelight and details a tragic and downright harrowing story about the implications of the opioid crisis. “‘I think I’m startin to get it,’ he said / ‘Better write it down, girl, so you don’t forget it / Three can keep a secret if two are in the ground / That’s how you keep a secret from comin’ back around’ /Threw his forty four Mag on the seat in the back,” Murray sets the stage, bloodstains on her cuff and a growl in her core. Here, she throws her vocals around like a two-ton brick, subverting expectations of melody and structure and letting the details stick like prickly spikes in the air. Later, “Slow Kill” continues her icy teardowns of sociopolitical shakeups and encases our stunningly depressing reality between flakes of earthy richness. “Too many good hearted people, livin’ on the edge / Walkin’ around like we’re already dead,” she nods, an acknowledgement and an admonishment.

With producer Michael Rinne, known for his outstanding work with Caroline Spence, Kelsey Waldon and Erin Rae, among others, Murray makes smart, albeit devastating, observations about our world in an enveloping warmth. Even when she sings on how “life hits you hard” with the cigarette burn that is “Pink Azaleas,” an aching charmer worming its way through her childhood and thumping against the ravages of adulthood, there is a frothy smoothness that perks the senses. “Tell Me” waltzes across the ballroom floor in a yesteryear gleam, and “Lovers and Liars,” ignited from the inside out with decorative but apt harmonica work (thanks to Pat Bergeson), hobbles over the desert’s surface in a boot-scootin’ line dance. Peppered throughout, the records boasts quite a lineup of talented musicians ⎯⎯ Kris Donegan (electric/slide guitar), (Justin Schipper (pedal steel/slide guitars/dobro), Ian Fitchuk (piano/keys), Michael Rinne (bass), (Fred Eltringham (drums/percussion), John Mailander (fiddle) and Rob McNelley (slide guitar) ⎯⎯ a pedigree which always the album to pulsate in dizzying fits.

In all, Southern Ambrosia, released on Murray’s own Loud Magnolia Records, connects the dots between each of life’s peaks and valleys. And even in grandeur, Murray laces her tales with remarkable levelheadedness. “They say always listen to your heart / I guess my old heart ain’t so smart,” she sings in sweeping echoes on the album’s final rotation, “Joke’s on Me,” an airy detour that ultimately bookends the record with solemnity and unfiltered acceptance. But that’s the nature of a Murray storyline. She doesn’t sugarcoat and attacks with bone-cracking punch after punch.

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