Tracy McNeil

The first most of us heard of Canadian singer-songwriter Tracy McNeil was as one half of Fireside Bellows. Jordie Lane recognised the talent and integrity in Tracy’s music when he discovered her soon after she moved to Melbourne in 2007 and their No Time To Die record was a thing of welcome beauty conjuring echoes of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Since then both Lane and McNeil have returned to their solo ventures, the latter gathering herself a band – guitarist Matt Green, drummer Bree Hartley and bass player Rod Boothroyd – to help her work up, tour and record new material. The result is a more robust proposition than Fireside Bellows, the electric band lending McNeil’s music grit and muscle, and her voice emerging all the stronger with such backing. Add to that some tasty input from the likes of pedal steel guru Garrett Costigan, Steve Hesketh on Hammond organ, Liz Stringer on banjo and cello, and Greg Field on fiddle. There’s conviction in every note that McNeil sings, and that’s the first thing you hear on Fire From Burning. Then you begin to notice the more subtle qualities – the tone and touch of the playing, the craft of McNeil’s songwriting, the lyrical integrity, the emotive push and pull of the combined elements. Her songs ring with the kind of universal authority that lends them weight and gives the impression that McNeil is raiding some lost American troubadour songbook. To hear a trio of songs like ‘Uncharted Ground’, ‘Ride Home’ and ‘In My Time’ all in a row causes you to doublecheck their origins. Yes, all written and sung by Tracy McNeil.
- Martin Jones - Rhythms Magazine

The sad truth for Tracy McNeil, a Canadian in Melbourne, is she can’t get arrested for playing this music in Australia, as good as it is. Even in Britain and Europe there’s support for quality music that draws from strong roots in country and rock; story telling music that pulls you in with its melodies, keeps you interested with its yarns and brings you back with its emotional tug, the way McNeil does splendidly. Here, however, from radio and reviewers to bookers and the Australian music Prize, this music is dismissed as too traditional, lacking this year’s sounds, not pretty enough or too grown up. Ask former Sydeysider Bek-Jean Stewart and Liz Stringer who made two of the best albums of last year and were widely ignored, and Perry Keyes and Jamie Hutchings, who did the same. And, yes, that does include the heart of so-called country locally – have you heard the dull fair they play on Saturday Night Country? Meanwhile, McNeil’s album doesn’t strike a false note across it’s 11 songs, which all feel carefully constructed and irresistibly human. She’s got a voice just rugged enough to supply the guts but not yet worn out of it’s reservoirs of optimism. High Horse opens the record with an almost stern face but hands caught wanting to touch; To Spend A Day sounds bright but spits out lines such as “And I’d call it quits if I gave a shit” and Ride Home holds close. You know, you don’t have to wait ‘til she moves back to Canada to buy this.
- Bernard Zuel - Sydney Morning Herald

In 2007, Canadian Tracy McNeil released her debut solo record, Room Where She Lives, and then, three days later, relocated to Melbourne. She brought the record with her, of course, and it garnered a small amount of community radio play, not really raising too much of a blip on the extensive radar that busily covers the Melbourne music scene. The following year, though, McNeil teamed up with Jordie Lane to form Fireside Bellows, releasing the sublime No Time To Die, and her name began to spread. Now, three years later and with a swag of touring under her belt, we have McNeil’s second solo record, Fire From Burning, a record that has been some time in the making and one that sees some distinct differences as to how you’d have heard McNeil in the past. Room Where She Lives and No Time To Die were heavily drenched in that quiet country sound, lilting and wispy, pulling on heartstrings while stroking heads by firesides, whereas this new record is muscular and robust. It’s McNeil taking the same thread, but bulking it out and injecting a bit of rock in there, and this is a fine thing indeed. The title track is a great example of this, a song that rolls and tumbles with a finely executed, and quite raucous, guitar solo in the middle courtesy of Matt Green (who also plays with Lane), a song which coming as it does almost right at the beginning of the record, heralds something slightly out of the box for this budding and extremely talented artist. The rest of the album closes in around the title track, some slower numbers, some faster, but all to a tee stout and full of alt country bravado and wisdom, a fantastic record from a musician only moving upward.
- Samuel J.Fell - Inpress Magazine