Temporal contradiction defines Odetta Hartman’s sound. Raised in New York’s East Village by liberal parents who exposed her to experimental theatre, modern dance, punk and hip-hop, she would then spend her holidays in West Virginia, where her mother grew up. “That was my Appalachian infusion,” she told Q magazine. “There’s a lot of dark history down there: duels, being down coal mines, so that runs in my blood.”
Her second album, Old Rockhounds Never Die, released earlier this month, compellingly fuses these disparate influences. She plays all the instruments herself, but her banjo is placed centre stage, to particularly fine effect on murder ballad Misery (complete with gunshots) and Sweet Teeth. The vintage feel is helped by her eerily timeless voice – reminiscent at times of fellow traveller Josephine Foster’s – which sounds as if it belongs on an Alan Lomax field recording. But these sounds of the early 20th century are twinned with very 21st-century beats, courtesy of producer Jack Inslee, although there’s more to them than meets the ear.
“Many of the beats on the album were recorded in the kitchen,” says Hartman. “If you hear these glockenspiel bells, that’s actually a set of kitchen bowls.” Field recordings of Icelandic seagulls and Moroccan steelworkers also feature, making Hartman’s an atypically global take on Americana.
• Old Rockhounds Never Die is out now on Memphis Industries. Odetta Hartman plays the Islington, London, 24 September
