“Two years” is a difficult album to quantify. I have listened to it a lot over the last couple of weeks and I’m still not sure of Emily Rodger’s musical intentions. Is this album just singer songwriter internally powered melancholy coated with a sprinkling of country music’s sonic punctuation or is it the very antithesis of the relentlessly upbeat Nashville sound of today?
It’s not as if Emily Rodgers even sounds like a country singer. She’s far too wistful, even distant, for such a comparison and her songs dig far deeper than the pearlescent paint on your pickup truck yet there is that hint of Gram Parsons in “Anyone” and, indeed, Butch Hancock in “Hurt” to reinforce that Ms Rodger’s wears boots that were made for talking rather than walking.
So, there you have it. This isn’t a country album but it seems to parallel one as if deliberately skewed into a deeper and altogether darker emotional dimension. If you have the kind of emotional pain that paracetamol won’t touch then “Two Years” could be the album for you.