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"Ah Mary," the lead track, is a bruising rocker with a three-chord chorus that at first blush seems to be about a girl with a destructive streak.
Upon further listening, however, the song reveals itself as a diatribe against President Bush's foreign policy.
"Big White Gate," which closes the album, is a warm ballad with country and gospel flavorings. The song is about a woman standing at the gates of heaven who hopes her singing will be enough to convince St. Peter to forgive past transgressions and let her pass.
Both songs were written by Potter, a 24-year-old musician with a boatload of talent, a huge voice and a three-piece band that gives her all the support she needs.
Not all of the songs on "This Is Somewhere" (a sly reference to Neil Young's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere") are as good as "Ah Mary" and "Big White Gate," but all of them entertain.
There's nothing fancy about the album: It's meat-and-potatoes rock 'n' roll that ranges all over the place but is anchored by Potter's melodic sense, her expressive vocals and lyrics that usually don't settle for cliché.
"I just wanted to write songs that fit together in a body of work, and that's not always easy to do," Potter said during a telephone interview from her touring van. "We struggled with finding a sound. We want to rock but we don't want to rock too hard. We want to be something that people want to listen to over and over again."
"This Is Somewhere," which was released last year, is Potter and her band's third album, its first for a major label (Hollywood). The band (Potter, who sings, plays keyboards, mostly a Hammond B3 organ, and some guitar; Brian Dondero, bass; Matt Burr, drums; and Scott Tournet, guitar) has been touring incessantly for the past few years.It will make a stop Saturday night at the Chameleon Club in downtown Lancaster.
Potter, a native of Vermont, and Burr formed the band in 2002 while both were students at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Tournet joined a short time later and Dondero came on board before the band recorded its second album.
Potter financed the band's debut, "Original Soul" (2004), through a painting business she ran. The band's second indie album, "Nothing But the Water," came out a year later and the buzz generated by the albums and the group's live shows caught the ear of executives at Hollywood.
Though Potter gets most of the attention, she said her three bandmates deserve much of the credit for the album's success.
"We created it together and that's really pretty special for me, to have those guys by my side the whole time because when I wrote the songs I was thinking about them," she said. "I was thinking about the way they play, what they're going to add to it, the ideas they contribute that help make the song even better. That stuff wouldn't be there if I was just hiring a band."
Potter said she wrote "Ah Mary" while sitting underneath a flag pole at a swimming pool. She said the sound of the flag banging against the pole annoyed her.
"It was just making a lot of noise," she said. "It wasn't waving beautifully or anything. It was just sort of flopping. I took it down and picked up my guitar and just started strumming."
She said she wrote "Big White Gate" after the death of her grandmother. Potter said she initially thought the song had been written before and she had somehow stolen it. She want as far as to run the song though a computerized chord-change program to see if it did already exist. The search, however, came up empty.
(795) (763) (93) (60) (45) (7)"It allowed me to channel my emotions," Potter said of the song, "and it made her whole life more important to me. Even when it's a close relative, you need to be reminded of those people who mattered to you and did something for you.
"And being able to sing that song every night is a great reminder of her. Sometimes it's hard to fight through the song without getting a little choked up. Usually it's because somebody has asked me to dedicate it to somebody they just lost, and I get choked up."
No question, "Ah Mary" and "Big White Gate" are powerful songs. It's a good bet Potter will write many more before she's through.
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Hoots and Hellmouth, Sat., 8 p.m., Chameleon Club, 223 N. Water St., $10 advance, $12 day of show, 299-9684.
E-mail: jferguson@lnpnews.com
