Theresa Andersson has worn a lot of musical suits in New Orleans, and her gift and curse has been to wear them all well. She has been funky, she has rocked, she’s been poppy and she’s played hippy blues. She has done all of them well enough to win over audiences, but none has seemed exactly right. On her new self-titled EP, she presents herself as a roots rock singer and it might be her most effective incarnation.

 

Andersson credits the CD’s sound to an arrangement of Madonna’s “Borderline” that she worked up with World Leader Pretend’s Keith Ferguson for performance at OffBeat’s Best of the Beat Awards. Here, the song is a ballad with her violin sounding more like a country fiddle. Paired with an electric piano and swelling keyboards, the song sounds like what we can only hope Nashville will sound like next.

 

It’s the most complex arrangement here, and it inspired her to pursue a wide-open, string-driven sound. Her take on Lucinda Williams’ “Jackson” is the most straightforward on the EP, and like most of the disc, it leaves plenty of room for her voice. Andersson makes good use of that space with some of her most intimate and nuanced vocals.