Album Review: Cat Clyde – Mud Blood Bone

On Mud Blood Bone, the follow-up to her 2023 album Down Rounder, Cat Clyde continues to mine 40s and 50s music to forge gems of her own.

Throughout the album, Clyde finds herself looking at genres and eras where the role of women was subsequently often erased but now is being restored to its rightful place in the origins of the development of modern music.

The album is studded with highlights: the rockabilly of Man’s World and the blues inflections of Hold My Hand – a song that has the same DNA as Dusty in Memphis. That’s apparent, too, on the stripped-down I Am Now, the blues expressed through a baroque, folk melody that makes me wonder if the genre fusion of early Pentangle also had a bearing here and elsewhere on the album. In their 60s heyday, Pentangle were not afraid to look to different traditions to weld into their own sound – and I’d wager Mud Blood Bone comes from the same sensibility.

In terms of other acts working in the same field today, the nearest comparison would be Texas duo Tele Novella. Mind you, that could be down to the similar style and sound of Cat Clyde’s voice and that of Tele Novella’s Natalie Ribbons – both embracing a point in time when music was just about to fire off in a myriad of styles to become rock and roll, country, rockabilly, modern blues and bluegrass.

In common with Tele Novella, along with artists like Sierra Ferrell, Big Thief, and The Deslondes, the realness and authenticity on Mud Blood Bone come not from faithfully recreating the arrangements and melodies of a formative era in music.

Rather, Clyde explores the wide social and personal changes that made that time so pivotal: women finding a new role in a wider culture that was seeing a major paradigm shift. Those shifts remain relevant: the glass ceiling, the intricacies and flaws in relationships – romantic and otherwise, and the pressure on women to be all things at all times – mainly to the male gaze.

Within that, there’s a wit to Clyde’s lyrics, wordplay too on songs like Man’s World and My Love, the latter finding commonalities between the Canadian prairies and the moors of England’s northern reaches. In fact, some of the album was written in England! Wanna Ride is pure rock and roll, however, and all the better for it.

In an age where it is hard for artists to assert their individuality, this album does just that, playing with expectations along the way. Listen to Mud Blood Bone with moonbeams in your hair, and allow yourself to drift into dreams of sleek cars and the Grand Ole Opry, sipping a Mint Julep or two along the way.

Mud Blood Bone was released on the 13th of March via Concord Records. The album is available on Bandcamp in digital, vinyl, and CD formats. Clyde embarks on an extensive series of European and North American dates to promote the album. For news on that, follow Cat Clyde on Instagram or Facebook.