Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers 'Starlight Hotel' Signature Sounds

A singer/songwriter who plays country music pretty much straight down the line with her band. She is singer, acoustic guitar players, writer and co-producer of this fine album. Muth has a voice that is distinctive and memorable with the right degree of emotion that makes it believable in the context of these songs sense of heartbreak and relationship breakdown. The Lost High Rollers deliver the goods too with a solid rhythm section from Greg Nies and Mike McDermott and a mandolin used as both a rhythm and lead instrument played by Ethan Lawton along side the electric guitar, dobro and steel of Dave Harmonson. There the occasional use of trumpet to add a little texture to the mix but it's Muth songs and voice that are the focal point of this their latest album. They play their music as an irony free tribute to the classic country music from the past but without resorting to a pastiche of an earlier era's sound. They do it with ability and heart that gives the music its core value. If I Can't Trust You With A Quarter (How Can I Trust You With My Heart) has that classic wordplay that has all but been expunged from country radio pop-orientated concerns these days. But that's just one song among a whole bunch of good songs that makes Starlight Hotel a real pleasure to listen and return to. It's full of pedal steel and mandolin embellishments that give the music its context, from ballads like Tired Worker's Song to the uptempo dance floor energy of Come Inside or the loneliness that haunts those staying in the Starlight Hotel. An album that will appeal to those who like the country straight, neat and delivered direct to and from the heart.