Alex Winston is tougher than she looks. We're not really sure where she gets it from, but the comely, classically-trained singer from Michigan, could rattle some doors if she was pushed into the corner. She warns about calling her sugar or darling, even when she sounds as if there's nothing better that could fit her. She's a locomotive that keeps going and going, never slowing down, if what she sees at the depots isn't to her liking. She won't just sit on the tracks. She won't need a tug. She just gets the steel wheels gaining momentum again and once they're in motion, only hell or high waters could get them to reverse course.
She sings with the brilliance of conviction, of knowing that she's the engineer and if someone's not aboard by the time she wants to pull out of the station, then that's just a whole lotta tough shit for them. The attitude that runs through her songs - while still surprisingly sweet for the tone of the back-stabbing and infidelity that she's singing about - must have come from those times that she opened herself up and made herself available, all of which turned out to be costly and scarring. She sings on "Guts":
"Goddamn, you're a liar/Threw me into the fire/I shoulda known, I shoulda known/My body's full of guts and other stuff/My body's full enough/To pull myself out.
"You let the bottom drop off/It's such a cop-out/Don't you feel ashamed/You, led me to the slaughter/But I'm someone's daughter."
She counts on that body full of guts for many things, not the least of which is the muscle memory that activates her trigger finger on the hand that waves goodbye.