Sophia Michaels
Ashley McBryde previews her hotly anticipated second album with a pulse-quickening new video for the dark revenge tune, “Martha Divine.” Backed by an unrelenting drumbeat that echoes the intense heartbeat of someone racing toward peril, the song’s storyline find the narrator in hot, angry pursuit of the title character, an auburn-haired Jezebel caught red-handed with the narrator’s daddy.
“I saw you sneakin’, I know what happened, I think it’s kinda funny you got caught only I ain’t laughin’,” McBryde sings ahead of the ominous, yet totally hooky chorus. “Martha Divine, Martha Divine, you put your hands on the wrong damn man this time.”
In addition to her performance shots during the video, McBryde plays the motel clerk who checks the cheaters in and then tips off the daughter, who heads straight out to a hardware store and leaves with duct tape, gloves, and a shovel. She arrives at the motel, demanding the couple’s room key from McBryde, who then finds herself inextricably drawn into events that follow. It’s another angle of the story McBryde started telling with the “One Night Standards” video, and the second of a three-part series.
Performed from the severely pissed-off daughter’s perspective, “Martha Divine” offers a little bit of snarling “Goodbye Earl” humor, a dash of “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” southern gothic, and a big dose of rough justice. The song’s memorable closing line, which redefines the parameters of said justice, offers a bit of a spoiler, but from the outset there was little doubt this was going to end well for the title character.
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McBryde’s as-yet-untitled new album is due in the spring. She’s set to launch her One Night Standards Tour Thursday, January 30th, in Birmingham, Alabama, and this week appears on the Today show (January 16th) and the Tonight Show the following night.
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