Samantha Fish: Runaway

Hailing from Kansas City, 23-year-old Samantha Fish is the latest in an emerging generation of young female blues singers- songwriters-guitarists who learned their blues from Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughan and their songwriting angles from Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and other literate craftsmen. Like her distaff contemporaries, Ms. Fish doesn’t pretend to have lived more life than she has or to be something she’s not—she’s experienced enough to have endured the romantic disillusion permeating her Delta-styled kissoff, “Today’s My Day,” with its provocative moaning acoustic slide courtesy of producer Mike Zito, and to have submitted to the sensual heat she confesses to on her swinging soul-rooted workout “Soft and Slow.” She nails the melancholy of Tom Petty’s “Louisiana Rain” in quiet, searching verses and bold, majestic choruses, navigating flawlessly through a thick, roiling arrangement of shifting textures and a storyline rife with conflicted emotions. And she turns saloon singer convincingly on her sexy blues ballad, “Feelin’ Alright,” luxuriating in its slinky small-combo groove, whispering sweet nothings as provocatively as Melody Gardot. Kudos to Zito for a bright, resonant soundscape big on vocals and guitars, the better to show off Ms. Fish at her most affecting.