artist
Kacey Musgraves
genre
Pop Country
my one sentence synop
a tepid album of worn out clichés about only needing love but falls short compared to her lush, dramatic soundscapes of golden hour..
slap rating
this decidedly does not slap
longer review
i feel bad because i don’t like being too critical of creative work in this day and age. at the end of the day, i don’t put out anything. no matter how good or bad a piece of work is, it takes courage to release something that you imagined from your brain. with that said, this album was truly disappointing. i hadn’t listened to much of her 2021 album, star-crossed, but what i did hear was… fine.
golden hour was, perhaps, one of my favorite albums of 2019. while the song writing was cliché in ways only country can sometimes get away with, her choices, the lyrics, and melodies were beautifully paired with, what i think is some of the best mixing and mastering i’ve heard in a minute. (i’ll list my audio gear in the garden at some point) from the lush soundscape, beautiful reverb, and warm tones from the guitar, it was truly euphoric.
this album? well, it makes me want to wax poetic about golden hour. deeper well felt like an artist who was forced to release music when they weren’t ready. it doesn’t really explore anything new in terms of material. the clichés aren’t saved by an orgasmic audio experience with ear worms you can’t wall from the vault in your brain. the songs don’t possess that luster and bravado. i think she went through a break up recently, so maybe that played into how the album turned out. as the theme to a lot of the music was, in her words:
where I’m at in my mid-30s and really evaluating what love means to me, what friendships mean to me, what are the things that I need, what is really serving me and not serving me… It’s about taking stock and making room for the things that actually do really matter.
/ Kacey Musgraves, People
which makes sense… but the only song that felt sincere to this idea was the song that shared the album’s name “deeper well,” a song where she sings about what it means to part ways with those you love, giving up her daily bong hits, and finding out what really gives her life instead of the facade of living (with a catchy melody to boot). poignant. i wish a lot of the album lived in this territory, because as we all come out of a collective period of coping and survival, post-covid, i think messages about finding the good, learning to find the good anyway, and replacing coping with living is beautiful.
alas - we do not get that. instead, we get lackadaisical lyrics about love, moving on, and a randomly placed reflection on why life and nature are the way they are (re: The Architect). to her credit, in a bbc article, she made it clear that she doesn’t want to fall into the trope of a tortured artist just because she went through a divorce and a recent breakup. She even went so far as to say that it’s a farce. which, fair enough! i don’t disagree. i just think the music, and even the sound engineering, could have packed more punch, even if it was just for good vibes.