Written by: Alex Green

Photo Credit: Garry Velletri

SEM is excited to premiere “All Decked Out” by Shannon McArdle.

Taken from the singer/songwriter’s new album A Touch Of Class, “All Decked Out” is a stark and stirring number of open-wounded beauty and frank poeticism. Bringing to mind everyone from Rosanne Cash to Gram Parsons, McArdle’s work has never been better. With grace and poise she continues to write battle hymns for the broken, fight songs for the forlorn and anthems for the anguished.

“All Decked Out” is an aching waltz that in just under four minutes manages to be one of the most wrenching and emotionally precise numbers of the year.

Of the song, McArdle tells Stereo Embers: “It’s definitely a waltz between two partners who share one heart. I didn’t grasp at the time I wrote “Stepping on My Heels” some 12 years ago in the Mendoza Line that ‘Father Time’s creeping up my vines and drying out my sour grapes’ was a little premature. And here I am, with the same sentiment from the same heart all these years later. She (said heart) is challenging these preconceived notions about ‘women of a certain age’ but she lamentably somewhat subscribes to them as well.”

This week McArdle appears on the newest episode of Stereo Embers: The Podcast and she’s set to play a record release show Friday (August 24) at the Union Hall in Brooklyn.