Moving away from the pop-folk direction of 2021’s Star-Crossed and 2024’s Deeper Well, the Nashville singer-songwriter returns with this seventh LP back to her country roots with gently trotting, stripped-back finely crafted collection of witty, catchy, candid numbers covering a spectrum of moods. Classic country tropes of heartbreak and loneliness are present, but with original, entertaining twists, steel guitar and dashes of Mexican flavours. Opener and title track enjoys splendid isolation (“No servicе on the phone and I'm alone, but it honеstly feels good / And if you tried to call, I wouldn't call you back even if I could”). Later track Loneliest Girl also suggests the sadder and more self-divided state of being happier alone. Contrarily, the very entertaining lead single and video Dry Spell details lustful longing and a string of unsubtle metaphor after 335 days of celibacy (“And the last time / It wasn't good anyway”) packed with detail (“I'm so lonely / Lonely with a capital "H" / If you know what I mean / I've been sitting on the washing machine … Ain't nobody's tool up in my shed / Ain't nobody's boots undеr my bed / Ain't nobody's truck up in my drive …”). Back On The Wagon is a slow, melancholy surely tragic, melancholy number about a hopeful yet surely self-deceiving, tragic and doomed relationship with an attractive alcoholic (“I found him passed out on the floor / But I saw him last night, he said he's found the light / He's different than he was before.”) I Believe In Ghosts is simple, but very catchy, beat-driven country rock. Rhinestoned is a gentle acoustic number about the pick-me-up of country music’s popular sparkling fashion accessory. Among the other standouts is Horses and Divorces (duetting with Miranda Lambert) in which the pair joke about their flaws … “Cause we're both at the bottom of the bottle and we're findin' / We've got a few things in common / Like horses and divorces and we both like to drink / Maybe we're more alike than we think … I can't believe we don't share any exes / 'Cause we both love cowboys and we're both from Texas / We both love Willie, but I mean really / What asshole doesn't like Willie?”.
And talking of Willie, perhaps in another sense, Uncertain TX, with the great Willie Nelson, is a gentle clip-clopping number: “The place I currently live at / Is barely even on the map / It's in the great state of confusion … It's weird that such a tiny town / Would have such a large amount / Of cowboys that just can't get off the fence / If you don't know you've got it all/ And your character is made of straw / You're gonna blow away with the wind … Here in Uncertain, Texas / I just don't know anymore / You think you really know somebody/ Then they up and walk right out the door / Did you ever love me, baby?/ I thought you did from time to time / Down here in Uncertain, Texas / Nobody ever makes up their mind.” There, in the limbo of emotions and fateful hope, with drily humorous tone, in nutshell she summarises the magic of her genre. Musgraves has a beautiful lightness of of touch on this album, perfectly at ease when true to roots, and in doing so captures wider appeal, in an excellent LP. Out on Lost Highway.
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