Americana’s BettySoo Makes a Delightful Return » PopMatters

BettySoo is a triple threat. She’s got a great voice, plays a mean acoustic guitar, and writes insightful lyrics. She also has a sly sense of humor and a sultry sensibility.

If You Never Go Away BettySoo Independent 18 July 2025

If you have been keeping up with the news lately, you hope BettySoo is right when she sings, “Things are gonna get worse before they get better.” The singer doesn’t mean politically—or just politically—life, love, and anything that really matters seems to suck right now, but BettySoo is no pessimist. The self-proclaimed “Queen of the Bummer Jam” asserts things will rebound. The delicious baker’s dozen tracks on her latest album, If You Never Go Away, suggest that even if one’s life is falling apart, there are better days ahead.

BettySoo is no secret in Austin, Texas, where she has been a staple on the area’s music scene. She’s released a spate of albums over the years, but this is her first full-length solo release in over a decade. If You Never Go Away should win her new fans. She’s a triple threat. She’s got a great voice, plays a mean acoustic guitar, and writes insightful lyrics. She also has a sly sense of humor and a sultry sensibility. Songs such as “What Do You Want From Me Now”, “Love, Fear, or Hunger”, and “Light It Up” burn with the yin/yang of attraction and repulsion. She has a match, and she knows how to use it!  

Will Sexton (Waylon Jennings, Roky Erickson, Steve Earle) produced the album and adds his own guitar, bass, and background vocals. He’s assembled a crack band of Memphis session players, which includes Al Gamble on B3 organ (St. Paul and the Broken Bones), Art Edmaiston on tenor sax (Greg Allman), and Steve Potts on drums (Booker T. and the MGs), among others. Sexton, originally an Austinite who moved to Memphis, knowingly melds the artist’s Texas country leanings with the grittiness of Memphis blues.

For example, on tracks such as “Memento” and “Human Echo”, Gamble’s B3 organ provides a soulful counterpoint to BettySoo’s pleading vocals. Sexton delivers a similar effect on “Rewind” with Potts’ drumming acting as an anchor to her ethereal vocals. So when she sings, “When the promise you believed turns out to be a lie”, the impact of the prevarication is heightened by the pounding tempo.

Her songs sound confessional. She sings in the first person and croons of personal dreams and desires more than offers observations of others. The best tracks convey the swagger of just moving on after life’s disappointments. That makes listening a redemptive act. We, too, are moved by her experiences.

The record closes with BettySoo duetting with James McMurtry on “Gulf Road”, an old tune of his that he reworked into a duet. (She accompanied McMurtry on a recent tour.) It’s the most stripped-down cut on the record, which fits the contents about a relationship pared down into its essentials of sex and alcohol. In the song, McMurtry may sing of his impending doom. His bones will be buried, but the memory of what life was like lives as a flame in BettySoo.

Or, as the title song reminds us, how can one miss another person if they never go away? BettySoo’s dark humor is evident in the tune, which is about the memory of a deceased lover. If You Never Go Away reminds us of her talents. After ten-plus years without a new record, it’s good to have her back!