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Making waves: Amy LaVere was cast as Wanda Jackson in Walk the Line

Men-monsters: Slipknot turn on the charm

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A Southern star is born

She's only 25 but Memphisbased Amy LaVere is so immersed in rock 'n' roll history that she and her upright bass might have time-travelled here from the mid-Fifties. She has jetted in for three dates at Soho's 12 Bar Club and there are several good reasons to catch her.

First there's her swoonsome new album, Anchors & Anvils (Archer Records), recorded in the depths of the Mississippi Delta by Bob Dylan collaborator Jim Dickinson. It features 10 acoustic, retro songs with countrified titles such as Tennessee Valentine and Pointless Drinking, all sung in a gentle croon that recalls Norah Jones with a downhome twang.

Though LaVere is new to London audiences, Anchors & Anvils is her second album - and she has spent enough time living in the past to feel like a veteran. when a casting director spotted her covering Funnel of Love, originally done by Fifties queen of rockabilly and Elvis Presley's former girlfriend wanda Jackson, she was invited to play Jackson in the oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic walk the Line. "I'm in that movie for such a blink it's barely worth talking about it," she confesses, but the connection hasn't done her music career any harm.

Nor has the fact that when she's not touring she spends her days working as a tour guide at Sun Studios, which has a strong claim to being the birthplace of rock 'n' roll as the regular haunt of Roy orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and, of course, Cash and Elvis. "I get to talk to people about rock 'n' roll all day. What an amazing place to go to work." when we meet between radio spots, she's still reeling from being introduced live on Radio 4's Midweek programme as "a country singer who looks a lot like Alanis Morissette". If I had to choose which of the two made her bristle more, it would be the country tag. She's not keen to be lumped in with the Nashville crowd, and seems happier when her sound is described more broadly as Americana. on the album that incorporates sultry gipsy fiddle on her cover of Carla Thomas's That Beat, chugging rock on washing Machine and bright mandolin on Cupid's Arrow.

Then there's the jazzy feel of Killing Him, a murder ballad about the revenge of a two-timed wife, which shows she isn't as sweet as she sounds. There's also a Bob Dylan obscurity, I'll Remember You, thrown in.

As a child, LaVere was inspired by her folk-singing mother to pick up the guitar, then took formal piano lessons. She can competently play drums, too, but likes her double bass the best, which she learned from a musician flatmate much later on. "The first time I ever picked it up I was able to slap it rockabilly style. I didn't realise that was supposed to be hard. I truly fell in love with it. I love having it as a prop onstage, and as something to hide behind. It's bigger than I am."

Next on her career ladder is more acting, in the next film by writer/ director and LaVere fan Craig Brewer, who has cast her before, in his Samuel L Jackson vehicle Black Snake Moan. And the continued conversion of European audiences, who would surely fall for her low-key charms as they have those of Norah Jones or Alison Krauss. watch out for a new Southern star.

Amy LaVere is at the 12 Bar Club, WC2 (020 7916 6989), 15-17 July.

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A bit too early for Halloween, Slipknot are back with a new set of horrifying masks and as brutal a sound as always. The boiler-suited men-monsters who brought you such party favourites as People = Shit and Pulse of the Maggots release their first album in four years at the end of August but their new single, Psychosocial, is in download stores already.

 

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