Suzanne Santo at Deep Ellum Art Co.

Santo’s genre-blurring songwriting on Yard keeps things sonically engaging. One moment she’ll tap into some haunting Americana soul (“Over and Over Again”), and then she’ll throw out a dirty rock tune with a slow-brooding stomp beat (“Bad Beast”). A tune with a slinking blues riff will open up into a bluegrass chorus (“Mercy”), or a folk tune will have a menacing distorted guitar tone growling in the background (“Goldrush”). She also brings in some of her noted Austinite musical pals. Gary Jr. spices up “Fall for That” with some hot licks, and Shakey Graves adds smokey flavor to “Afraid of Heights.” It’s an eclectic mix. Then again, Santo’s stylistic smoothie of folk, rock, blues, pop, Americana and roots music has long been hard to pigeonhole.

– inlander.com