Amy Rigby - Hang in There with Me (2024)

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Amy Rigby - Hang in There with Me (2024)

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US singer-songwriter legend Amy Rigby will release her new album 'Hang In There With Me' through Tapete Records on August 30, 2024. Eleven up to the minute songs written by Amy and recorded by Wreckless Eric at the couples home in upstate NY, Hang In There With Me is a bracing look at life inside the vortex of the last few years. Mortality, aging and youthful missteps refracted through Amy's insightful lyricism emerge not wistful but resolute even triumphant. Rigby's distinctive voice bluntly traverses love, loss and DIY projects gone wrong over guitars cranked or shimmering, indelible bass lines, a raft of synthesisers, keyboards, beat boxes and the occasional drummer allowed into Amy & Erics rustic mid-century echo chamber.

Robert Baird/Qobuz
The dissolution of Amy Rigby's band The Shams and her marriage to Will Rigby of The dB's powered the singer/songwriter's late '90s solo masterpieces Diary of a Mod Housewife (1996) and Middlescence (1998). The indie rock/cowpunk progenitor, blessed with an uncommonly sharp eye for details and the courage to dig deep into her own existence for life lessons, proves again throughout Hang in There With Me that she is a rare musical presence. Now in her mid-60s, Rigby ponders the wisdom and fears that age brings in this smart and understated solo triumph.

In "Hell-Oh Sixty," she recites her life's progression—"Forty was a field, a field of dreams/ Fifty didn't fit, had to let out the seams"—and deepens that theme in "Too Old To Be So Crazy," where she wrestles with still being driven to write and perform music. "I've tried a thousand times to give it up/ Fall down and fuck it up/ You can call it a victory/ Trust the mystery," she concludes. Playing both acoustic and electric guitar throughout, Rigby is joined by the talented Wreckless Eric (Eric Goulden)—her husband and musical partner who adds bass, guitar, organ, Moog Opus, lap steel and backing vocals; Sam Shepherd plays drums throughout.

Hang in There With Me, recorded and mixed at Rigby and Goulden's upstate New York studio, has moments of deliberately-added distortion for texture. The album hits its stride in the smile-inducing "Bangs," Rigby's ode to a hairstyle where she name checks Nico and Warren Beatty before offering, "Don't call it fringe/ That's way too tasteful/ I wanna channel/ Marianne Faithfull."

Opening with a synth drone, "Bad in a Good Way" demonstrates Rigby's near perfect mix of wordsmithery and perceptive observation as she expressively paints a musical personality, "Sure he was slick but he was brave/ He was a sage, a player/ Bituminous layer." A rhythmic bounce powers "Bricks," a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other tale of relationship recovery where she even manages a lyrical smile, "I'm building me a patio/ Got a grill and pinot grigio/ It's cool." A meaningful and melodic return by an honest and insightful songwriter.