Maria McKee

Item: Peddlin' Dreams
Author: Steve Stockman

Peddlin' Dreams

(2005)

Reviewed by Steve Stockman

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Label Eleven Thirty RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2005

alternative country americana folk rock singer-songwriter

Maria McKee has the voice. That has never been in question. She once told a journalist friend of mine that her voice was her witness and I laughed at such a cop out until I heard her sing live and it confirmed my belief God! There will be a few atheists turned agnostic when they hear the variety of her performances here.

Where she has frustrated the critics is in not frustrating herself by pleasing the critic. You get the impression she is a feisty, impatient girl with a short attention span and the musical ability to feed it. So she takes years to bring us her life's work, the meticulous and lavish High Dive a rich layered and ambitious record that at times lost her voice in the mix. This was after she PJ Harveyed out on her 1996 outing Life Is Sweet. Peddlin' Dreams will please the old fans who wanted a second helping of her eponymous debut album all along. Indeed the first track, "Season of the Fair," it seems, is an outtake from that album. We believe of course that this is her flightiness bringing her home on her terms rather than giving in to expectations. Though there seems a desire to do things quicker and with less thought, this time around that shouldn't give any suggestion of a work any less complete.

Life is not so sweet for most of the characters here which is surprising for a happily married woman on a roll artistically. "My One True Love" is a gorgeous piece of depression. It deceives in title and the celebratory poetry of beautiful landscapes and human relationships. The singer misses it all, it is not for her. The melancholy can never go too dark and desolate as McKee's voice can never go Nick Cave. The title track suggests where the shadows get cast, the dreams of America's cheap promises of consumerist happiness. "People In the Way" is McKee's best ever lyric and her at her most autobiographical. Centred on her own flirting with fame and its fickleness she gives advice to the young wannabes; "We are all just people in the way and that in itself is more than enough. "

A cover of Neil Young's "Barstool Blues" is a major hint at the overall influence here and follows a Youngesque guitar workout on "Everyone Has a Story." If McKee settled long enough in this terrain she'd chase out Lucinda Williams as alternative country's darling and never allow the new kid on the cattle ranch fences Kathleen Edwards to get up on her horse. She'd reign as Queen but enjoying herself as just a person on the way leaves excitement of anticipation as to where she goes from here; to satisfy her own ambitions no-one else's.