Jittery hillbilly noir. Velvet Underground from the pines.
Trailer Bride
" Smelling Salts"
 

 From the outskirts of Chapel Hill in the great Tarheel State of North Carolina comes TRAILER BRIDE -- summoning the "Ghosts of Music Past" from their fitful slumbers, stuffing them into the trunk of their pimer-gray Delta 88 with some homade brunswick stew, and heading for the crossroads to tickle the hairy underbelly of country music -- with Bloodshot Records, Chicago's "Home of Insurgent Country" (the same folks who foisted The Waco Brothers, Neko Case, Robbie Fulks, Alejandro Escovedo and other schmoes on you) riding in the shotgun seat. Are you comin'?

Fronted by songwriter, singer, sawist, self-taught slide-guitar savant Melissa Swingle, Trailer Bride tosses around influences the same way some folks toss around dresses at the thrift store. Back porch music, new wave, Delta blues, Appaöachian warbling, eerie swamp excursions, and Gothic languor mix together to brew a hip-mo-tizing, taffy-stretching, woozy, wiggly-wheeled haunted wagon ride. Comparisons to Tranation, Lone Justice, early Gun Club, Son House, or Fetchin Bones would not, depending on the user, get you smacked upside the head.

Trailer Bride reared their head most recently on Volumes I and II of the Yep Roc Records' "Revival" compilations (featuring other southeastern piney woods rootsbased acts such as Whiskeytown, Six String Drag, Backsliders, Danielle Howle, and Dexter Romweber of Flat Duo Jets) -- which was preceded by the astonishing sucess of their self-titled debut CD on the even tinier-than-us Walt Records.

Now it's time for you to heed the siren song -- like the dilapidated mansion on the edge of town that your friends dared you to go in first, Trailer Bride will raise those same hairs on the back of your neck. Dawn, Chris, or Jenni @ Jacknife will be callin'.