Album of the Week: Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited

New Zealand Net Radio plays a song from our #albumoftheweek every hour from 9am to 12pm Monday to Friday. Listen in @tunein at https://tunein.com/radio/New-Zealand-Net-Radio-s305138/

Bobby Gentry is one of those intriguing legends. A smash hit off her first album with “Ode to Billie Joe”, she was one of the first female artists to write her own songs. She produced seven studio albums, and performed until the late 1970s until she lost interest in performing. That’s it. No reunion tours, anniversary tours etc.

The world was her oyster when she produced her second album The Delta Sweete. Pitchfork brilliantly described it as “full of technicolor arrangements, oddball collages, and playful sexual innuendos”.

Now Mercury Rev (formed in Buffalo, New York in the late 1980s), described as psych-pop masters have turned to this lost gem. Reshaping the songs with a string of big name singers (Phoebe Bridgers, Beth Orton and Lucinda Williams amongst them) we’re in for something a bit different this week – should be a treat!