Beth Bombara releases the Official Music Video for, ‘I Only Cry When Iβm Alone/Upside Down’
Famously, St. Louis is a cultural and geographic crossroads. Itβs the beginning of the West, the Eastβs front door, a window on the South, and the jewel in the middle of the Mississippi. St. Louis embraces all of the quintessentially American musical styles β blues, country music, soul and R&B, Southern rock, mountain folk, to name a few. With typical Midwestern modesty, singer-songwriter Beth Bombara might be reluctant to call herself the darling of the cityβs musical scene. So weβll say it for her: no artist better reflects the depth and breadth of St. Louis music β its traditionalism, eclecticism, respect for history and craft, and overwhelming American-ness β than Bombara does.
The local press concurs. Bombara has been counted three times among the βBest of the Yearβ by the Riverfront Times, the arts paper thatβs the last word on events and culture in St. Louis. Her deeply personal version of Americana contains echoes of country music at its most heartbreaking, rock at its grittiest, and folk-pop songwriting at its most confessional and honest. Itβs won her a dedicated audience in her hometown: sheβs performed on local television and sung at the Whitaker Festival in the Missouri Botanical Garden. But to make Evergreen, the best album sheβs ever cut and the fulfillment of all of her early promise, she had to leave St. Louis and decamp to the Rocky Mountains. There, in a secluded cabin among the pines, Beth Bombara crafted a set of songs that are destined for acclaim far beyond her hometown. Sheβs shared the stage with Rhett Miller, Old 97βs, Lilly Hiatt, and Josh Ritter. Now, people outside St. Louis are taking notice: the album has been previewed by the likes of Pop Matters, The Bluegrass Station, and LA Weekly, who named it their album of the week and said βBombaraβs voice shinesβ¦every tone is tinged with emotion, nothing is wasted. By the end, youβll feel wiped out, yet youβll want to listen to it again.β Sheβs even gotten spins on BBC Radio.
Evergreen is a song-cycle in the truest sense: the tracks share themes, a tone, and a particular sound that manages to be simultaneously raw and dreamlike. Itβs an album with flow, and to demonstrate that, sheβs shot one continuous video for the albumβs first two songs. βI Only Cry When Iβm Aloneβ and βUpside Downβ both foreground Bombaraβs rich, resonant country-pop vocals and Samuel Greggβs stinging electric guitar; theyβre twin expressions of the same set of powerful musical ideas. But while the second video picks up immediately after the first, the attitude of the two clips couldnβt be more different. The first clip is elegant, glamorous and dramatically lit β Bombara dresses in a series of magnificent outfits suitable for a night onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. For the second, she dons a curly wig and plays a janitor at the theater where the first video is set (she even sings into her feather-duster). Itβs two sides of an accomplished, thoughtful artist who has never let her sense of solemnity get in the way of her playfulness.
FOLLOW ON: TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE
