As opening lines go, “I ain’t fit to be no mother/ I ain’t fit to be no wife” is certainly arresting. But then everything about Valerie June’s latest album is startling. The line is from “Workin’ Woman Blues,” which, over its short three minutes, builds from its dry-as-dust, spare blues foundations into an ornate brass-encrusted teetering edifice that shouldn’t make sense but does.

It’s a canny choice of first song, as Pushin’ Against a Stone rarely adheres to convention. The same could be said about Valerie June. This 31-year-old Tennessee native has spent the last decade flitting between Memphis and the West Coast, busking, selling herbs, working in bars and cleaning, all the time writing and playing. However, it wasn’t until June decamped to Brooklyn and the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach agreed to write and produce with her that things finally clicked.

It’s clear that Auerbach’s patronage has liberated June. This is an album dense with ideas finally coming to fruition. The ghostly, tired desire of the beautiful “Somebody to Love” is minimalist soul that gives way to the languid, gospel-infused shrug of “The Hour.” That’s followed, however, by “Twined & Twisted”‘s keening Appalachian bare-bones folk, a shaft of bright beauty that… read more »