Smelling Salts

Debut CD is rife with jittery hillbilly noir from the piney woods of North Carolina.

Full Description

This Bloodshot debut CD is rife with jittery hillbilly noir from the piney woods of North Carolina. Imagine the Velvet Underground stoked on Brunswick Stew instead of heroin. Join them as they hop into their primer-gray Rocket 88 and head to the crossroads (listening to REM, Fetchin Bones, and the Gun Club on the radio the whole way) to testify.

Smelling Salts tosses around influences the way some folks toss around dresses at the thrift store. Country porch music, Delta blues, new wave, Appalachian warbling, eerie swamp rock and Gothic languor mix together for a woozy, wiggly-wheeled wagon ride. And it's a got groooooove.....

Bolts out of the gate with the raggedy rockabilly gusto of "Quit That Jealousy" and doesn't let up. "Wildness" is call for, well, wildness (and wiping out shopping malls, too, which can't be a bad thing) with a some savant slide work by Melissa--it's a flat out JAM. The Bride gets their spook on with "Graveyard" and gives a shout out to Pedro on "South of the Border" (you road hogs on I-95 know what we're talking about). And the "Porch Song" is the perfect soundtrack for that steamy July evening....and a perfect song for all you mothers out there.

Heed the siren song from that alluring house at the end of the street your friends used to dare you to go in during full moons.

Choice Cuts:
Wildness
Porch Song
Graveyard
Show Bizness

Short Description

Even before Melissa opens her mouth, Trailer Bride sounds fresher, stranger, more contemporary than virtually all its contemporaries.

— LA Weekly
This Trailer Bride is hardly married to genre conventions. If you require a reference point, think Maria McKee with loads of time to kill. Here's a band just a likely to hint at Bo Diddley as Cowboy Junkies ... Twang can be freaky, too.

— Option
Melissa Swingle has a stunningly casual sound to her voice, a mix of natural disinterest and world-weary resolution that's so gritty it's like walking barefoot on gravel [and] conjures a sort of deep woods bottleneck slide guitar mojo which shakes across every track.

— Creative Loafing
Equal parts rootsabilly, country noir, and psychedelic folk, with Melissa Swingle turning in a tour-de-force vocal performance worthy of a backwoods Polly Harvey.

— Magnet
Imagine actress Frances McDormand's sheriff character from Fargo ... with a southern accent and Randy Newman's eye for detail.

— Raleigh News and Observer