Abi Tapia
The Beauty in the Ruin       2008

review: 3rd Coast Music by John Conquest      ****    
Rather the catalyst for this month’s editorial, this is Tapia’s third album, you know, the good one. I never heard the first, which she’s let go out of print, but while there wasn’t anything actually wrong with her second, made after moving to Austin, to paraphrase a very astute remark made by Lee Nichols some years ago, coincidentally about another female singer-songwriter, of all the albums released in Austin in 2005, One Foot Out The Door was one of them. However, it did bring her into the ambit of Chris Gage, who produced it, and this time round he and Christine Albert felt strongly enough about the results to put it out on their label, which, Gage & Albert being nobody’s fools, is reason enough to let her step back up to the plate. With Gage once again producing her 12 originals, also playing guitars, keyboards, mandolin, dobro and percussion, with Glenn Fukunaga bass, Eleanor Whitmore violin, Bruce Logan drums, Buzz Evans pedal steel and Albert background vocals, Tapia brims with confidence, her delivery of her country/folk/rock material both bold and nuanced. JC