Samantha Crain                                                                                          Kid Face                                                                                                       Ramseur Records, 2012

Samantha Crain’s sophomore solo effort is a spartan and elegantly beautiful album. With minimal production offering nowhere to hide, she relies on intense lyrics and a powerful voice to convey her portraits of the Midwest.  Whether escaping from or returning to the familiar comforts her native Oklahoma has to offer, this is the heart of the record.

You can hear Woody Guthrie as clearly as Flannery O’Connor in her songs. A creative writing major in college, she offers very clear and concise pictures with her words. On stand out track, “Taught to Lie,” she sings “Behind an old Conoco sign that’s shiny silver in the night/And in the box there is a stone and a little red rat-tail comb/And seven motel keys, and a souvenir penny.” The songs narrator has slowly transformed herself, facing with complete honesty, her faults, and overcomes turbulent past.   

On “The Pattern has Changed,” she displays a dry wit, observing, “What is spare time? I spend all of mine trying to figure this out.” A joke to keep herself amused in spite of the trouble before her.

Infatuation has bested Crain on “Never Going Back,” when she admits “I had a deal with man and God/One let me down and one did not.”

Starkly urgent, there’s nothing slick or overly thought out here. This is an honest representation of a songwriter with more to say than most. Crain as a storyteller faces the challenges of break-ups, cancer and personal upheaval head on. With a brave and compelling eye for detail, she’ll still be standing when the worst of it has passed.