Category: Carson McHone

In her vividly descriptive lyricism, which comes alive across all her albums, but especially on her latest release, Pentimento, Carson McHone is a natural artist. Written on paintings and postcards, McHone deftly utilizes color, texture and movement in these exceptionally compelling and immersive arrangements. “Tell me if you want to, what colours I should use?” McHone posits on “Winter Breaking”, an immediate highlight that bustles with a Beatles-like swing and delicately embellished with birdsong carried over from the intro featuring a contemplative spoken delivery of an extract from a letter 1840 letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Margaret Fuller. Wrapped in those two opening tracks of Pentimento, McHone, demonstrates how the door hads been left ajar for collaboration between audience and artist, and, crucially, art with art. There may be almost 200 years separating Emerson and McHone’s poetic phrasing, and the worlds in which they were penned, but the works are connected through a sense of humanity and the importance of trying to remain hopeful in dark times. 

Carson McHone has been singing on the barroom stages of Austin, Texas since she was 16 years old. She’s a rare contemporary country artist who was born and raised in the Lone Star State, rather than moving to the rootsy music mecca to try and make it. Her latest is Still Life, produced in collaboration with Daniel Romano, her husband.