St. Louis-based singer-songwriter Beth Bombara first turned my head in 2019, when her then-recent album kept me company on a long car ride. Flash forward to the present and her latest long player, It All Goes Up, has likewise proved good company since its release in early August, though mostly via headphones here at my desk. There’s a pleasant throwback quality to the songs, which uniformly conjure the SoCal rock sound of the mid-1970s. Play the album between Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky and Linda Ronstadt’s Simple Dreams and it fits right in.
The retro vibe was present on that 2019 album, Evergreen, I should mention. The main difference: Those songs were composed on an electric guitar, whereas these came to life via a classical guitar that Bombara rescued from the back of a closet during lockdown. As a result, although electric guitars are omnipresent throughout, the music is a tad more laidback—think moody, dramatic and restrained.
Her bluesy vocals are a thing of a wonder, too, dark-hued one moment and rising as if the sun on the horizon the next. Lyrically speaking, she crafts vivid imagery that’s a match for her vocal prowess. The opening “Moment,” for instance, finds her channeling her inner Mariette Hartley while chastising the hurry-up world we find ourselves in: “Can we slow down/long enough to take a Polaroid picture and wave it around/Until the moment is material.”
“Lonely Walls,” written during the heart of the pandemic, is a thing of wonder, ably capturing the thoughts and feelings many of us had during those dark times: “I’m still waiting for the sun to shine/for the world to return to something I recognize.” (The video, which I featured earlier this week, is cool, too.) “Everything I Wanted” digs into the time- and money-crunch many folks experience at some point in their lives, while “Get Up” should be made the anthem for Procrastinators Anonymous. “Carry That Weight” is not the Beatles jam from Abbey Road, but a plaintive offer of support to a down-and-out friend.
“Curious and Free,” meanwhile, looks to the past, with Bombara remembering when “I was 17/curious and free/dancing alone to the radio.” It’s one of the “dramatic and restrained” songs I referenced above, reminiscent of certain AOR and outlaw country mainstays—from Bad Company to Hank Jr., essentially. “Give Me a Reason” continues the mood, with an electric solo from guitarist Sam Golden and Bombara using autumn’s end as a metaphor: “I’m not the same person you touched yesterday/we’re ushering in a season of change.”
The album comes to a close with a trio of charged tracks, starting with “Electricity,” in which she muses about whether the sparks she feels with another are enough to power them long term; the breezy “What You Wanna Hear,” meanwhile, seeks a preemptive truce with her lover in order to avoid another fight; and “Fade” dissolves to black with Bombara tracking via her heart someone “who drifted into the darkness.”
As I said up top, I’ve been enjoying It All Goes Up since its release in August; that I didn’t review it until now is due to this blog being a weekend endeavor and, too, my sloth-like ways of late. But make no mistake: It’s one of the year’s standout releases. If you’re a fan of the SoCal rock sound of the ‘70s, enjoy introspective lyrics and the like, give this a go.
The Old Grey Cat 
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