The songs on
Where We Live revolve around place and dislocation: remembrance is used as a way of honoring what's come before, and meditations dwell in times and places that have passed by barely noticed. As on her two previous releases,
Tanya Savory continues looking toward location for identity and for minute details in big pictures. To that mix she adds some uncharacteristically biting criticism of her current hometown, Nashville, and it's sleek, pop-ensconced and inauthentic musical and cultural aesthetic. "All these folks from far away/in boots that they bought yesterday" sums up the town's tourism, and of it's current music scene she sings, "it lost the grit and it lost the twang.../can't understand how it took three guys to write that song." She also throws in some rare-to-her-material romantic love on "Losing Me," but manages to tie in a road metaphor when she likens looking for a relationship's end to putting an ear to a train track. Musically
Where We Live combines piano balladry with traditional country and bluegrass instrumentation, and finds a low-key, folk-based groove akin to that of
Nanci Griffith and
John Gorka. ~ Travis Drageset