Zoh Amba: Eyes Full review – raw, rugged country rock also has real tenderness

(Matador)
Better known as a formidable free jazz saxophonist, these thrashing songs about the artist’s Tennessee childhood home share a similar genre-pushing intensity

On opening track OCD, Zoh Amba stops a twinkling, rootsy guitar melody and starts over, searching for the right way to tell the story of a boy diagnosed with “dreamin’ all the time”. Amba lands on a queasy combination of empathy and conspiracy (“said that mind needs fixin’ / gunna end up like everybody”), churned up by thrashing, violent strumming – the kind that causes blisters and wrecked strings.

These cryptic postcards from Amba’s home town of Kingsport, Tennessee describe childhood memories with fresh eyes: they left at 17 and returned only recently, now in their mid-20s. Blending gruff reality with poetic licence, Eyes Full is a rugged, experimental country rock record that feels deeply lived in, despite representing an abrupt change in sound: Amba is best known as a prodigious free jazz saxophonist.