“Satan is a woman, she tempted me away / From all the things that make me wanna do wrong in a day / I thought that I could leave her, I tried to make her see / But Satan looked me in the eye and said / ‘Bobby, I’m trying to see you free’.”
Let me say straight away I love country and western music, especially the variety that carries the past deep within the DNA of its bones, yet still offers up something surprising and new. Music that surely is a gift that keeps on giving – and long may that continue.
My introduction to the genre came through the country ‘outlaw’ movement of the late 60s and early 70s – via Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Lee Hazlewood, and all the other quirky renegades who came to shake Nashville to its very foundations and in doing so, changed the course of country music forever.
Those early pioneers, each singer owning their own distinctive vocal, the sort that could only belong to them and no-one else, took the city way out of its comfort zone and roughed it up a little by injecting an equally unique take of life, that in part, reflected the huge changing culture of that era. A divided genre ever since, the country music outlaw movement remains popular still today.
Edmonton’s The Bobby Tenderloin Universe are a group that arrived (at least here on my desk) as a fully formed and most welcome addition to this great canyon of work, and surely someday one that may well have an outlaw country chapter dedicated to themselves. Releasing their sophomore album, “Satan is a Woman,” just last month, we discover a record crammed full of idiosyncratic songs which I strongly recommend you seek out – especially as my focus is aimed solely on the title track here today.
As a standalone track, “Satan is a Woman” offers up the hypothesis of a devilish protagonist walking into Bobby’s world dressed up as some form of modern femme fatale – the sort that grabs a man’s heart instantly, yet simultaneously threatens to destroy it in the process. That character you meet and nothing in life stays as it was, the sort that might just kill him (if he doesn’t murder her first, of course). Something surely must give, but this mystery remains unsolved – at least in the almost three-minute run time of this song.
Delivered in a rich baritone that amalgamates all the forementioned artists, and over the boom-chick-a-boom beat reminiscent of the Tennessee Three, Bobby’s sound is also delightfully augmented by some solitary female backing vocals and blasts of exquisite pedal steel that connect it to generations past.
To be honest, there’s precious little else I know about this talented group – their origins, personnel or evolution – but I guess this aura of mystery only adds to my own personal intrigue. Most importantly, it’s the music here that does the talking, and “Satan is a Woman” certainly talks volumes to me.
Photo Credit: Emma Frazier / Sebastian Buzzalino
Music has been a lifelong passion, a journey that as a child embraced the late 60's counter culture and has lasted until the present day. Despite trying to play guitar for the best part of 45 years, to his own frustration, never much beyond the first four bars of “Stairway to Heaven.” A self-confessed vinyl junkie, his other interests include collecting music memorabilia, old Muhammad Ali fight programs, and watching film. He lives alone in Nottingham (England) and still uses the term “Groovy” - these two facts may be intrinsically connected.
