JACKIE MARSHALL – LADIES’ LUCK

Described as Janis Joplin meets Dolly Parton, the unsuspecting and unknowing potential listener could surmise that Jackie Marshall is both ballsy and busty. And metaphorically speaking, they wouldn’t be wrong. Certainly Marshall is one lil’ lady with one big voice,with the ability to break loose out front of a rockin’ band a la Big Brother and the Holding Company. While the first single Too, Somebody verges a little towards the obvious in a very Melissa Etheridge way, from there onwards things get far more interesting. The title track Ladies Luck is fairground whimsy in tone as it opens, “Eating cherries and drinking whiskey / We don’t have kids and there’s no man listening”, these ladies are out for a good time not a long time; and Ugly Man lets the band slowly off the leash in a burning blues number that finally releases Marshall’s inner country-rock goddess – you can see her filling out her stadium well. But it is often in the phrasing, the way she works her words that makes Jackie Marshall stand out, and along with the more circumspect Lucie Thorne, this is a new and delightfully unexpected vein of Australian female songwriters.

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