★★★★★
The label debut by Tennessee-to-New York transplant Valerie June is a remarkably braided album of roots music, connecting country, string band, gospel, blues and R&B traditions so fluently, it's like the racially cleaved styles never needed connecting. Dan Auerbach adds his signature crate-digger production and guitar sizzle, but back-porch-y tunes like "Somebody to Love," with Luca Kézdy's delicious fiddle, are no less rousing than the juke-jointy ones...
- www.rollingstone.com
2013-10-24
★★★★★
Valerie June's official debut manages a tour de force. Born in rural Tennessee between Memphis and Nashville, her music inhabits an extraordinary blend of the country, blues, and soul between the two music scenes and still remains thoroughly modern thanks to co-production from Dan Auerbach. "Workin' Woman Blues" sets the tone, a gnarled twang rooting the tune with the distinctiveness of folk-blues great Elizabeth Cotten before fervent percussion and horns slide in seamlessly to push the song...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2013-10-03
★★★★★
Valerie June's official debut manages a tour de force. Born in rural Tennessee between Memphis and Nashville, her music inhabits an extraordinary blend of the country, blues, and soul between the two music scenes and still remains thoroughly modern thanks to co-production from Dan Auerbach. "Workin' Woman Blues" sets the tone, a gnarled twang rooting the tune with the distinctiveness of folk-blues great Elizabeth Cotten before fervent percussion and horns slide in seamlessly to push the song...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2013-10-02
★★★★★
The singer and multi-instrumentalist Valerie June "was raised one hour from Memphis and two hours from Nashville," a place in art where, according to June, "the color lines of the South seem to blend." This combination is reflected in her musical choices: she has worked with musicians who seemingly have little in common, ranging from Old Crow Medicine Show to Me'Shell Ndegeocello...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2013-09-04
★★★★★
Valerie June Pushin' Against A StoneBy Jason SchneiderIt's always treading dangerous ground to talk about "authenticity" when it comes to any style of music. But there's a reason why artists from Memphis, for example, have played such a crucial role in the creation and development of so many genres. The city was the focal point of an area steeped in blues, gospel, country and soul talent, and artists who had the largest capacity to absorb those sounds invariably sounded like no one else...
- exclaim.ca
2013-08-31
★★★★★
"I ain't fit to be no mother / I ain't fit to be no wife / I've been working like a man y'all / I've been working all my life." Quite a weighty, though supremely genuine and honest, way to initiate an album. On Pushin' Against a Stone, those lyrics, excerpted from opening track "Workin' Woman Blues", establish the tone for the debut effort from singer/songwriter Valerie June...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-08-27
★★★★★
"I ain't fit to be no mother / I ain't fit to be no wife / I've been working like a man y'all / I've been working all my life." Quite a weighty, though supremely genuine and honest, way to initiate an album. On Pushin' Against a Stone, those lyrics, excerpted from opening track "Workin' Woman Blues", establish the tone for the debut effort from singer/songwriter Valerie June...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-09-05
★★★★★
"Pushin' Against a Stone," the remarkable debut by Valerie June, is the sound of an artist who carries the weight of the world in her voice but has never forgotten her roots. June grew up in Tennessee but makes music that's hardly tethered to time, genre, or even a single mode for the way she sings. She forges an aesthetic that's at once rural and urban, with traces of soul, country, gospel, and the blues. This is a shape-shifting album that's ecstatic from one song to the next...
- www.bostonglobe.com
2013-08-20
★★★★★
On Later... it was her, a guitar and a stop-you-in-your-tracks song that began "I ain't fit to be no mother/ I ain't fit to be no wife".
Here, "Workin' Woman Blues" becomes a kitchen-sink production and a little of that intensity is lost. Never mind, because as her debut album progresses it becomes clear June has ambition to be more than a dreadlocked Gillian Welch. "Organic moonshine music" she calls it, and no one could argue with that.
- www.independent.co.uk
2013-08-13
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