MOLLIE O'BRIEN AND RICH MOORE

Love Runner

2014-02-28

Love Runner is Mollie O'Brien and Rich Moore, the wife and husband duo's second studio album together, and this time at the center is the universal theme of home. O'Brien released eight records before working with her husband, who had made a name for himself in the Colorado acoustic music scene. The album features three original songs and eight covers, creating a diverse sound mostly within the Country and Folk genres. The album opens with Dave Van Ronk's "Sunday Street," O'Brien's vocals bringing new meaning to the originally male told story. "Went Back Home" is the first original track on the album. Its autobiographical nature rhythmically swings through years of romance, heartache and commitment. The second original and title track, "Love Runner," is charged with sexual desire, veiled in rusty truck metaphors and accordion riffs. The last original track, "Don't Let The Devil Ride," features O'Brien's impressive, ease-filled vocals, Moore's guitar mastery, and their friends' fantastic instrumentation in a song that leans beyond the Folk genre, toward a Jazz/Blues sound. Robbie Fulks' "They Want Me Here" brings the fiddle in a lyrically driven folk song. The album closes with O'Brien's voice towering over a building instrumentation in the folk-feeling "Green Summertime."
Richard Martin

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