10022015 - Gretchen Peters "Blackbirds"

There's a great line in the third song on this album, where Gretchen Peters sings "When All You Got Is a Hammer, everything looks like a nail". The song is called "When All You Got Is a Hammer", and deals with the treatment American soldiers get - or, rather, don't get - upon returning from serving in war areas. That song might be the best on this album, but the rest of the record is well worth your time. Peters is one of those artists whose voice would warm your heart even if she sang about strangling you to death with your own intestines (probably the first time that sentence has ever been used in a Gretchen Peters album review) or just uttered unintelligible noises. So when you get lovely tunes like the ever so slightly "Only Women Bleed"-reminiscent "Pretty Things" or "Jubilee", one of the prettiest songs this side of Maria McKee, there's nothing to do but fall in love with this album.