Welcome To The Rock Show: Elizabeth Cook

It only seems to happen once every couple of years or so, but there are summers when a young woman will put out a CD that grabs me by the ears and won't let me go. I'm thinking in particular of 1994, when Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club seemed inescapable — and I didn't mind one bit.

Elizabeth Cook's Welder doesn't yet qualify as "inescapable" but if it ever did you'd see me standing on the bleachers, cheering (A, e).

Despite my occasional forays into the genre of country and y'all-ternative, I'm a reluctant listener at best. Cook's music is unmistakably country, but in Welder her vocal possession of the genre is so unique and unselfconscious I found myself completely on-side on the first spin. The country "method" is to hook the listener with the novelty songs and hope they'll stay for the heart-breakers. It works. Anyone who's curious should start with "El Camino" and "Yes To Booty". If that tickles the cochlea, try "All The Time", "Follow You Like Smoke" and "Heroin Addict Sister."

Or just surrender, Dorothy, and get the whole package.

Also: I'm digging Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, who I'll get back to in the next week or two. Until then, head to their website and check out the photography of Adrien Broom. Is that not the greatest Rock 'n' Roll photography since the young Annie Liebowitz slummed with The Rolling Stones?