Allison Moorer - Blood

The Guardian 100

(Autotelic/Thirty Tigers)

One summer night in 1986, teenage sisters Shelby and Allison Moorer were woken in their Alabama home by gunshots. It was the sound of their father shooting their mother dead before turning the gun on himself. The horror and trauma of the event has haunted the sisters’ songs intermittently during their respective successful careers (Shelby Lynne, the elder, using her middle name as surname), but Blood, Allison Moorer’s ninth solo album, is the first to address the tragedy and its fallout in detail, a companion piece to her newly published memoir of the same title.

Its 10 songs are stark but powerful, their anguish and insight given a deft, minimalist treatment by producer Kenny Greenberg. Opener Bad Weather evokes a brooding, southern gothic atmosphere; Cold Cold Earth, sung raw and solo, describes her parents’ last hours; and Nightflight tenderly describes the bond between the sisters, left cowering that night. The lyrics to I’m the One to Blame came from their father, an embittered songwriter, while their beloved mother is given voice in The Rock and the Hill. From tragedy, Moorer somehow finds compassion and resolution amid the inescapable bonds of a shared bloodline. An aching, moving testimony, beautifully realised.