Album Review: Amber Digby – Passion, Pride, and What Might Have Been

Amber Digby was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, moved to Texas to sing honky tonk country music, has a mother who was a harmony singer for Connie Smith and a father who played bass for Loretta Lynn, and is probably the best new female country music vocalist to debut in at least a decade.

On her latest record, Passion, Pride, and What Might Have Been, Digby tackles a slew of hardcore country songs which were first written or originally performed by artists such as Mel Tillis, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Melba Montgomery, and Johnny Paycheck, among others.

There are two major risks for a young artist when undertaking this kind of project. First, the record may end up seeming like an exercise in nostalgia and therefore too removed from the present day to be relevant. Second, even strong vocal performances may fail in comparison to the originals. Digby didn’t choose to sidestep these pitfalls, as some of her contemporaries might have, by using “updated” (read: frivolously compromised) arrangements, or even by “re-interpreting” the songs by substituting simpler melodic lines and plainer, breathier vocal licks—instead, she fearlessly hurdled these pitfalls and, in doing so, has given us a vibrant, emotional, hard-hitting, honky-tonk record that finds her stepping up to take her place amongst the best female vocalists in the country music canon.

Passion, Pride, and What Might Have Been is a quintessentially country record in every respect. The rhythms are mostly shuffles and waltzes, with the occasional straight beat. The arrangements are simple, focused, and feature inspiring musicianship in the form of moaning steel guitars, twanging telecasters, crying fiddles, and tinkling honky-tonk piano backed by tight and unforgiving rhythm sections. The songs tell straightforward tales of grown-up heartache, shame, frustration, hopelessness, fatalism, and determination in the face of failure. The melodies are all classic country at its best, which is to say that they are staggeringly pretty and dripping with emotion.

Digby has mastered the technique of bending and pushing key notes to give us the maximum amount of heartbreak and anguish while maintaining the restraint that today’s country howlers can’t seem to manage. One of Country Music’s trademarks is the tension between its character’s quiet dignity and their effusive shame–which is expressed vocally with that tenuous mix of expressiveness and restraint–and Digby expresses this tension masterfully.

But Passion, Pride, and What Might Have Been isn’t successful as an exhibition of Digby’s talents alone. Like other super-expressive, singer-centric Honky-Tonk material (think Connie Smith and George Jones) the power of this record is the synergy of the singer wringing every ounce of pathos from an already heart-wrenching melody and a painfully honest lyric.

There is something worth mentioning about the lyrics on this record, though. They are all painfully honest, but it would be fair to criticize a lot of the material here for being lyrically uninteresting. There are lines within verses that seem to lack purpose, and more than a few choruses seem to meander until it’s time for their hook. There are some notable exceptions–namely “We’re the Kind of People Who Make the Jukebox Play,” and, to a lesser degree, “She Didn’t Color Daddy” and “Soakin’ Wet.” But overall, the lyrics on this record don’t offer a wealth of insights, though they do carry the emotional water that they need to in order for the songs to be effective.

This record may not be an especially insightful one, but it doesn’t need to be in order to be an especially resonant one. There is a moment in the waltz “You Snap Your Fingers” when the melody soars to an anguished high point right before the inevitable hook–which the listener knows will be nothing more than the singer’s lyrical and melodic resolution to shamefully accept the heartbreaking and unalterable truth of their situation–where Digby sings “I’m just beginning to learn that some things never end.” It’s in that moment, the most pained of the song, that the listener might feel a catch in their throat, be inclined to drop their head, and mutter to themself, “God Amber, ain’t that the truth.”

Passion, Pride, and What Might Have Been has more than it’s fair share of those moments. Its overall excellence and musical focus, and the compelling pathos of Digby’s performance of these songs, make Amber Digby’s Passion, Pride, and What Might Have Been a must-have for country music fans.