Sweetheart Rodeo

Album Review

Singer/songwriter Dawn Landes is a Brooklyn-based Kentucky native who does not play country-rock music (although it is a small part of her eclectic mix of pop styles). So, probably someone should have talked her out of titling her third full-length studio album Sweet Heart Rodeo. Even separating "sweetheart" into two words, it inevitably calls to mind the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (a title Landes actually uses for one of the songs), even though it has nothing to do with that classic 1968 album. But, in a music industry in which A&R is practically nonexistent and Landes probably licensed the album to the releasing label, Cooking Vinyl, there may have been no one to offer this advice. Be that as it may, Landes' Sweet Heart Rodeo finds the airy alto coming up with another set of catchy tunes reflecting on romance, tricked out with studio effects the artist (who moonlights as a recording engineer) added in her self-built home studio. She gets even trickier when covering Margo Guryan's "Love," playing the drums herself in lumbering imitation of Ringo Starr. But she is at her best when she goes dreamy, as she does on the ballad "Brighton" and when she sings helplessly in "Wandering Eye," "My baby's got a wandr'in' eye/Oh, my." What any of this has to do with rodeos (although they come up in the lyrics) is anybody's guess; Dawn Landes is no cowgirl, but rather a quirky indie singer/songwriter with a light touch.