One-time support for acts ranging from BB King to Kelly Joe Phelps, veteran of endless busted record deals, and inhabitant of Paterson, NJ, the broken steel town that inspired Ginsberg, Kurtz is an uncompromising force on this aptly-titled record. Her voice sometimes belts out so strongly it bruises the songs, but can also be bluesily intimate over torch song strings or grating industrial guitars, as she tells stories of chastened hopes, on the road and in Paterson’s dead end.
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