| Diary of a Mod Housewife | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Amy Rigby |
| Border: | yes |
| Released: | 1996 |
| Genre: | Rock |
| Label: | Koch |
| Producer: | Elliot Easton, Gene Holder |
| Next Title: | Middlescence |
| Next Year: | 1998 |
Diary of a Mod Housewife is the debut album by the American musician Amy Rigby, released in 1996.[1] [2] It has been called a concept album about growing older in a music scene, marriage, motherhood, and romantic dissolution.[3] Rigby supported the album with a North American tour.[4]
The album was produced by the Cars guitarist Elliot Easton, with the dB member Gene Holder.[5] [6] Rigby duets with John Wesley Harding on the album's third track, "Beer & Kisses".[7] Ira Kaplan contributed organ to "That Tone of Voice". Diary of a Mod Housewife was written while Rigby was doing temp work in New York.[8]
Robert Christgau thought that Rigby personalizes "the political for a bohemia that coexists oh so neatly with structural underemployment [and thinks] harder about marriage than a dozen Nashville homilizers." Entertainment Weekly called the album "an impressive debut," writing that the songs "occupy a world where relationships, jobs, and urban life are rife with unfulfilled promise." The New York Times wrote that, "like Kate McGarrigle and Iris DeMent, Ms. Rigby has a reedy voice with steely underpinnings," writing: "With clear-cut melodies and an exacting eye, songs like 'Beer and Kisses' and 'Just Someone I Had in Mind' measure the distance between romance and reality."[9]
The Philadelphia Inquirer placed the album on the "short" list of "grown-up rock-and-roll records that examine monogamy with insight and intelligence."[10] Stereo Review deemed it "a cross between the Go-Go's, Buddy Holly, and a female cowpunk band."[11] The Winston-Salem Journal called it "a disgruntled look at the disheveled life of a creative thirtysomething woman."
AllMusic wrote that "in addition to her knowing lyrical eye, Rigby is also a terrific composer who synthesizes elements of rock, country, folk and girl group-era pop."