Editor's Picks 10/30: Big Riverz, Amelia Riggs, Les Greene
Every week, Rainbow Rodeo editor Rachel Cholst picks the three best queer country albums of the week. This week features gentle kisses on the forehead, exuberant redemption, and R&B that celebrates power bottoms.
Each week, editor Rachel Cholst picks the best queer country to send you off into your weekend.
Big Riverz – Break It Like a Sunrise
Big Riverz gift us with an exuberant album on Break It Like a Sunrise. Clocking in at just under 25 minutes, Sunrise is a pop punk gem shining light on new love, queer creativity, and fashioning our own stories. Rae Spoon's clarion vocals give the music a sense of moral weight – not that these are heavy, but they ring true. "Slow Down Cowboy" and "Country Love" bring a little twang to the proceedings with tender affection. The first song is a compassionate reminder for those who roam the range a little too hard, while the second deserves a pop country music video replete with bonfires and red solo cups. "Heat Goes Up" will simply live in your head rent-free for weeks. Break It Like a Sunrise is a gentle kiss on your forehead acknowledging all of the obstacles we must traverse while reassuring us that we are, indeed, doing our best.
Amelia Riggs – MOTHERFUCKERREDEEMER
Released earlier this summer to celebrate Riggs' year of sobriety, this collection of covers invites us into the music that has a powerful grip on Riggs' endless explorations through folk, rock, and experimental music. MOTHERFUCKERREDEEMER shines in its celebratory individuality. While I am most familiar with John Prine's "Seldom Is a Word I Often Use," the EP leaves me confident that Riggs' interpretations of the rest (including "All 2 U (Motherfucker)") bear deep reverence to the musical rivers Riggs seeks to bring together in her own work. These songs are deeply weird (complimentary) and are a statement of Riggs' commitment to be unapologetically herself.
Also of note, Riggs recently published two demos she had been asked to write for a screen adaptation of Imogen Binnie's classic trans coming-of-age novel Nevada. Context clues suggest this was Jane Schoenbraun's shelved film, but either way, it's lovely to have these tender, reflective songs now.
Grey DeLisle and Les Greene – Grey and Greene
In what I'm pretty sure was one of three Grey DeLisle releases this year, the acclaimed singer-songwriter and voice actress teams up with soul and R&B singer Les Greene for a rockabilly-influenced delight in Grey and Greene. The pair share vocal duties on a series of timeless songs, but "I'm Gonna Let You Call Me Baby" is easily the standout. Here, the androgynous lyrics and Greene's self-assured authority point to why he was cast as Little Richard in Elvis. Echoing Ann Powers' book Good Booty and its ruminations on sex, eroticism (in the Greek sense), and the ways gender-bending have long been the fuel powering rock'n'roll, this is a song of queer desire and power that belongs in the canon.
