Send "Elizabeth Cook " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Elizabeth Cook is the kind of country singer that folks don’t know quite what to do with these days. On one hand, she’s a pretty blonde with a sunny, twangy voice and a knack for writing hyper-catchy songs, so she would appear to be a lock for the Nashville big time, alongside starlets like Miranda Lambert and Jewel. On the other hand, Cook carries an uncompromising ornery streak. This is, after all, the gal who titled her last album Balls, as in “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman”. That song’s hook alluded to “Stand By Your Man”, another indication that Cook is far less interested in joining the current crop of hit-country darlings than in embodying both the good-hearted women and the good-timin’ men of country-music yesteryear.Cook is a master of classic-country idioms; by the time she released her major-label debut in 2002, she was already a mainstay on the Grand Ole Opry, and she continues to demonstrate her taste and knowledge of the forms on her Sirius radio show, “Elizabeth Cook’s Apron Strings”. Her own music, though, dances the line between accessible modern country and traditionalist reverence about as well as anyone in the game these days. And like Hall-of-Famers like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, Cook delivers her honky-tonk with a healthy dose of humor. With one elbow on the bar and one elbow in your ribs, Cook is one fun gal, which might not win you over if she didn’t write such great songs....full text |
| Wordpress |
| Nashville malcontent Elizabeth Cook calls her new album Welder, a title she explains by noting that a welder is someone who fuses together different, separate elements into something united and whole. It’s a fitting image for Cook, a rising star whose seemingly split personas unite to form one of country music’s most interesting and complex figures– and who brings every side of her muse to bear on Welder more than on any previous album. This, after all, is a woman who hosts a country music program on Sirius Radio, and who still sings regularly at the Grand Old Opry; she’s also a woman whose last album, Balls, was simply too daring and unconventional for Nashville to embrace, leading it to be sounding rejected by country stations all over. I can’t imagine Welder making any more of an impact on the radio, at least not the mainstream stations; the thing with Cook, though, is that while some artists simply seem incapable of being anything other than doggedly idiosyncratic, she makes it pretty evident that she could be a big country music star if she really wanted to. She’s got the chops, both as a singer and a songwriter, and she’s got the production pedigree behind her; Balls was produced by Rodney Crowell, and this one by Don Was. But what’s more than that, Cook has an understanding of country music past and present that she floats across this album, effortlessly and teasingly, as if to taunt the Nashville machine by showing how huge she could be if she were only willing to play by their rules....full text |
| Washingtonpost |
| The title of Elizabeth Cook's fifth album is both a nod to her moonshiner father, who learned to weld while doing time in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, and a clue as to her musical modus operandi. Namely, to unite an assortment of free-spirited performers to forge an enduring strain of country-based roots music that's entirely her own. Working with producer Don Was, Cook enlists not only the heady likes of Buddy Miller, Dwight Yoakam and Rodney Crowell for vocal support but also the Carol Lee Singers, the venerable chorus from the Grand Ole Opry, the institution that embraced Cook when Nashville's Music Row wouldn't. The swaggering "Rock n Roll Man" is galvanized by gutbucket guitar playing from Cook's husband, Tim Carroll, about whom she wrote the song. "Not California," a dusky ballad, features acoustic guitar from Gary Maurer of the Americana chamber group Hem. "Welder" ranges stylistically from acoustic barnyard romps ("All the Time") to bluesy Southern rockers ("El Camino") to a torchy ballad worth of Opry star Jeannie Seely. This is to say nothing of the range of emotion on the record, from the roaring "Yes to Booty" to the disarmingly gorgeous "Heroin Addict Sister," a lament for a junkie ex-stripper who's been married five times and likes to crochet. Best of all, though, is an elegiac reverie about the funeral of Cook's mother, where "organs didn't play, but you could hear the lonesome sway of the local guitar man" as "the boys drank beer out by the barn."...full text |
Elizabeth Cook lyrics
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