Her first English-language solo album Land (2011) left me with a taste for more, because three years after that album (and an extensive theater tour) Frédérique Spigt will again release an English-language album. With this record, the Rotterdam chanteuse dives even deeper into roots music. The Medicine Show is a love letter to American rural music in all its forms: blues, country, folk and in the
… half-Spanish Nos Levantaremos even tex-mex. The album opens with the jolly title track that evokes images of the 'medicine show', a traveling fair from the nineteenth century with freaks and quacks as its main attractions. The tone on the other songs on The Medicine Show is less exuberant. With her jagged blues voice, Spigt tells about murder (Goodbye Eleonarda), heartbreak (I Won't Cry No More) and the death that awaits everyone (The Great Grim Reaper). The smile only returns in the last song, the bittersweet Christmas song Christmastime In Jail. (PdK)more
