Your third (perhaps fourth, depending on how you count) album is an uncommon occasion for a live album. Admittedly, the MC5 recorded its first album, Kick Out the Jams live, but it was an uncommon band. In Shannon McNally’s case, she had two major label albums and one indie collection of covers under her belt when she recorded North American Ghost Music live last summer at Schuba’s Tavern in Chicago. Far from seeming premature, though, it provides the clearest insight into her musical vision.

 

 

 

Her first album, Jukebox Sparrows, was a difficult album for her as she and Capitol Records clashed. The cover art suggests that the label recognized pop potential in her voice and looks and didn’t want to waste that potential on roots rock. She rehabs two songs from that album here, and “Bolder Than Paradise” particularly gains from the patient, expansive treatment. It has a “Like a Hurricane” quality to it, not only in Dave Easley’s extended solo but in its evocation of mood. She and the band sound like they’ve let themselves go to a spiritual place, one that’s complex and simply beautiful at the same time. The song serves as the clearest explanation of “North American ghost music,” the term McNally uses to describe her sound.

 

 

 

Most of the songs on album come from last year’s Geronimo, which was produced by long-time Bob Dylan guitarist Charlie Sexton with Dylan bassist Tony Garnier on the sessions as well. The change from Jukebox Sparrows was pronounced, and the Dylanesque “Miracle Mile” raised the possibility that the transformation owed more to Sexton than McNally. McNally produced the new album and on it, there’s less chug and boogie in the arrangements, so the songs are more sway-inducing than ass-shaking. With the driving rhythm guitar replaced by Easley’s ethereal pedal steel, from which sounds just seem to emerge, there’s more space and more mood.

 

 

 

Dave Easley is McNally’s foil on the record, and if he doesn’t emerge as a guitar hero around the country after this, people just aren’t paying attention. He switches almost mid-phrase between pedal steel and electric guitar, and is eloquent and appropriate throughout. Also in the band are New Orleanians bassist Sam Price from Otra, David Stocker on keyboards and her husband Wallace Lester on drums, but it’s really McNally’s show. She gives free rein to her idiosyncratic voice. Her performance is more stylized than it has been before, and it’s more effective for it. Her vocals are murmured at points, as if she’s singing as much to herself as to an audience. In some songs, she seems to slide in and out of personas, all in a husky voice that can mourn Geronimo as easily as invite you in when you need sanctuary.

 

 

 

What is most impressive about North American Ghost Music is McNally’s willingness to take artistic chances. Declaring your music to be “North American ghost music” is a risk in itself, as it flirts with seeming pretentious, and presenting it on an album of lengthy, mid-tempo songs that initially seem privately performed, is a big chance. We’re a fastball culture, and we’re pro-immediacy. Her nerve pays off, though, and the results are emotional and rich, with songs growing even moreso with successive listens.