Rating: NNN
Jolene Higgins, aka Little Miss Higgins, recorded her fourth album at the titular Renaissance Bison Ranch near La Broquerie, Manitoba, with the Winnipeg Five (really just a new name for country/Dixieland five-piece the F-Holes).
It was recorded in a barn, so it’s no surprise that the album’s a more lo-fi, rustic listen than Higgins’s last one, Across The Plains. (On quieter songs like Early Morning Thief you can hear fire crackling.)
But it’s not just the setting that’s changed: Higgins uses her baritone ukulele more often, her voice sounds more relaxed, and it was evidently a collaborative project – pedal steel player Eric Lemoine and upright bassist Patrick Alexandre Leclerc co-wrote some of the songs.
Bluesy opener Heavy Train and big-voiced, torchy lament Barns You Used To Dance In are highlights. I Was At An Auction is also a hoot – Higgins does an impressive auction caller imitation.
Top track: Heavy Train
Little Miss Higgins and the Winnipeg Five play Hugh’s Room tonight (Thursday, November 21).