Sydney Morning Herald by Bernard Zuel

**** (4 stars)

The sad truth for Tracy McNeil, a Canadian in Melbourne, is she can’t get arrested for playing this music in Australia, as good as it is. Even in Britain and Europe there’s support for quality music that draws from strong roots in country and rock; story telling music that pulls you in with its melodies, keeps you interested with its yarns and brings you back with its emotional tug, the way McNeil does splendidly. Here, however, from radio and reviewers to bookers and the Australian music Prize, this music is dismissed as too traditional, lacking this year’s sounds, not pretty enough or too grown up. Ask former Sydney-sider Bek-Jean Stewart and Liz Stringer who made two of the best albums of last year and were widely ignored, and Perry Keyes and Jamie Hutchings, who did the same. And, yes, that does include the heart of so-called country locally – have you heard the dull fair they play on Saturday Night Country? Meanwhile, McNeil’s album doesn’t strike a false note across it’s 11 songs, which all feel carefully constructed and irresistibly human. She’s got a voice just rugged enough to supply the guts but not yet worn out of it’s reservoirs of optimism. ‘High Horse’ opens the record with an almost stern face but hands caught wanting to touch; ‘To Spend A Day’ sounds bright but spits out lines such as “And I’d call it quits if I gave a ****” and ‘Ride Home’ holds close. You know, you don’t have to wait ‘til she moves back to Canada to buy this.

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