THE rapid rise in the popularity of country music has new audiences of those in their 20s and 30s lapping it up in their millions.
Folk artists like Kentucky’s massively popular Tyler Childers have rolled the dice and taken their sound right back to country’s traditional roots and young audiences can’t get enough.
Enter a new album by the Nambucca Valley-based singer/songwriter Dianne Coombes.
On ‘Ripples’ Coombes delivers 10 cleverly crafted tracks that are somehow traditional and contemporary country all at once.
While her sound pays homage to the Middle American birthplace of the genre, it balances beautifully somewhere between Nashville and Narrabri and her lyrics are a poetic journey along familiar places and feelings that Aussie audiences will love.
The singles from ‘Ripples’ released ahead of the album have had phenomenal chart success, with the homage to her home town of Macksville, a song called ‘Small Town With a Big Heart’, already spending 21 weeks in the Australian Country Songs Top 40 Airplay Charts, much of that time at Number One.
A hallmark of this album is that each song is markedly different from the other, holding the listener’s attention from the first track to the last.
The majority of the words and music on ‘Ripples’ were penned by Coombes herself with notable accomplices like Angus Gill, Jon Weisberger, Allan Caswell, Sam Gay and Templeton Thompson lending a hand at various junctures.
Coombes says that her process of writing songs always begins with personal life experience and is like painting a picture of particular times in her life.
The song ‘Ripples on a Pond’, from where the album draws its name, is a beautiful tribute to her late husband Lenny, and has the listener pondering their own legacy and impact on others around them.
‘Heading West Again’ is a completely relatable song that eloquently describes the feelings we all get when heading from the coast over the Great Divide and has an addictive melody that will have it winding up on regular playlist rotations.
The song ‘Rocket Science’ is a duet where Coombes is joined by Allan Caswell, resulting in a vocally seamless and lyrically clever offering that suggest these two should work together more often.
Musically this album has mass appeal and producer Angus Gill has nailed just what it is that the current market wants to hear.
Recorded in Gill’s studio at Sancrox on the Mid North Coast of NSW, a who’s who of country’s top musicians play on Ripples but at no time does the music get in the way of Coombes’ vocals.
Among those who present their pedal steel talents on this album is the pre-eminent Michel Rose, and both Tony Wray and Tim Crouch appear on banjo with the latter providing sublime fiddle to a number of tracks.
Ripples is a generous collection of life’s tales put to velvet vocals and impeccable music that will appeal across genres.
You will find Ripples on Spotify, Blue Shamrock Music and you can reach out to Dianne via Facebook/Messenger for a CD.
A release party for Ripples will be held at the Warrell Creek Hall on Saturday 20 September from 6:30pm.
Bring your own drinks and nibbles, and you are all invited.
By Mick BIRTLES
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