Folk Roots Magazine (UK)
aug/sept 2000

Myshkin
Why Do All The Country Girls Leave?
Binky 1024
review by Ian Kearey

Myshkin's excellent last album, Blue Gold, concentrated on her songwriting abilities and the songs were set against understated backings. This time, however, she's kicked out the jams (as we oldsters like to say) and given each set of lyrics a very different kind of backing, to the point of naming each style with the title. So you have Country Girls (Rock), The Last Year (Ska-billy), Sugar Man (Polka), and so on, through to Yvonne's Bar (Yorkshire Brass) and even Market Town (Folk). Commercial suicide, lady! But the hell with that - this album is a brilliantly cohesive work that confirms Myshkin as one of the best songwriters around.

All the tracks feature Myshkin on mandolin and guitar plus husband Mike West on guitar and banjo, Matt Perrine on bass and Scott Magee on drums; and the variety of songs perfectly fits the subject matter of each song, without being too obvious or laboured. The hard blues of Headstrong - "you wanna slip through the cracks, but your eighteen and pregnant honey, there's nothing subtle about that", the libidinous polka of Sugar Man, and the menacing swing of Apricot Tree - "you and your new junky boyfriend and me, falling apart under the apricot tree" - all frame the songs exactly. If anything, this album's nearest neighbor is David Ackles' American Gothic, with which it shares it's sweep of Americana: the little boy's painful realization of slavery, loss and cruelty in Market Town, low life and revenge in Ruby Ann, the passing of time in Yvonne's Bar (not so much Yorkshire Brass as the soul horns on James Carr's records) and the history of the Conquistadores in Bojador - each song encapsulates a period or emotion, without sentimentality but with empathy and compassion, not to mention tenderness and pure craziness at times. Oh yes, and she sings like a dream, too, projecting herself into each character just enough to make the point - no more.

The moment a reviewer starts talking about an album being An Achievement it's usually time to turn to ...And The Rest or the Biff cartoon, but this really does represent something special.