Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue

Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue's Last to Leave is their third studio album, and a very nice addition to their repertoire. This mix of country, swing, and rockabilly contains eleven original tracks, all of which were written in New Orleans or on the road, and one all-too-fitting Pat Benatar cover. The album has David Brouillette on bass, Chris Adkins on electric guitar, mandolin and backing vocals, Gregory Good on acoustic guitar and backing vocals (and moonlighting as the album's cover artist), and Doug Belote on the drums. Last to Leave starts off with a Vanessa Niemann grunt before jumping into the track "Long Black Ribbon" which will have you singing it for the rest of the day. The Pat Benatar cover of "Love is a Battlefield" is another track that will have you singing it for the rest of the night, with them owning it as a country song. The album plays with darker traditional country themes, such as lost love, as well as tracks such as "The Ballad of Addie and Zack," which gives a post-Katrina homicide the murder ballad treatment, as she croons "It's not your fault" in the chorus. Despite the themes of these songs, Niemann sings with a warm voice that puts you in the room with the band. On the track "Last to Leave," Nashville-based guitar player Tony Martinez plays pedal steel guitar. The album conveys the band's versatility, as this is a band that feels just at home in a lounge, or singing at a festival along the river and is a huge step forward for a band that has firmly entrenched themselves in the New Orleans music scene.