Artist: Imelda May | Album: Tribal | Released: 2014 | Label: Decca | Catalog #: 3763558 | Genre: Rock, Rock and Roll | Country: Ireland | Duration: 00:40:47

Dubliner Imelda May has done handsomely out of planting herself at the junction where rockabilly, burlesque and street-corner sassiness meet, and her fourth album doesn’t tinker with the recipe. There’s no need: Tribal’s title track, in fact, alludes to the pleasures of existing outside music’s mainstream. In May’s hands, rockabilly is a feral form, vitally alive and compelling. When she really gets her teeth into a song, it’s impossible not to be swept away by the whirlwind of pounding percussion, rootsy guitar and ravenous vocals – the two opening tracks are a lesson in ferocity. (And the second, Wild Woman, an essay in primal female desire: “I knew a girl once upon a time/ She grew into a werewolf/ That monster was all mine/ She was incarcerated inside my skin”). The real stunners, though, are the slow-burners: Gypsy in Me and Wicked Way are nuanced blues numbers, the latter made deliciously sleazy by B-movie trumpet fills; the delicacy of Little Pixie, inspired by first-time motherhood, is charming rather than sickly. This album is no time capsule; it’s fresh and bracing.

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