Kacey Musgraves - 2013 Anticipation

yeah the brandy clark album is incredible - she co-wrote a good chunk of the musgraves album so is probably the closest in terms of sound/songwriting. pistol annies debut is essential (their second album is good too). miranda lambert's entire career too, especially crazy ex-girlfriend. also would suggest sunny sweeney's concrete from a couple of years back - she's been a bit silent since then and a bit forgotten (last i looked she was crowdfunding the follow-up) but she absolutely belongs in the conversation

someone I know as mainly a fan of dancehall/grime (lex might know him actually)

any clues? i didn't think any of my dancehall/grime crew were paying attention when i talked about country, would be nice to be proved wrong

oh yeah and (another third of pistol annies) ashley monroe's like a rose

2***n?

nah don't know him

Ahhhh.

Will grab the other stuff you two have bigged up, cheers!

Lex is the expert here but Brandy Clark and Ashley Monroe are my post-Kacey finds.

Other things you might want to have a listen to, which might be a bit too, uh, country to match your request but which I love:

Lee Ann Womack, whose atitude is very different but, oh my, some of those songs. The last two LPs ("There's More Where That Came From" and "Call Me Crazy") are amazing, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS35hISn7x0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTr9pKw-5I

I can't find a better link to hearing "Sleeping With The Devil" than the clip of it on Amazon but it's an amazing record: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sleeping-With-The-Devil/dp/B004MZC8Z4/ref=sr_1_4?s=dmusic

when i interviewed shane mcanally he said he got his first big writing break with lee ann womack, who was his favourite country singer back then!

xpost Wow! I dodn't know that!

("Sleeping With The Devil" is by Brennen Leigh btw, which is obv if you clicked the link but not obv if you didn't and thought it was more Lee Ann.)

I feel a bit bad for Sunny Sweeney, I'm not sure why she's not bigger than she is, you get the feeling she can't get nayone in the country music establishment to care about her.

the Brandy Clark album is good not great: her strength (modesty, well-observed songs) is also her weakness.

I can't recommend Lee Ann Womack's There's More Where That Came From more highly enough though.

the Brandy Clark album is good not great: her strength (modesty, well-observed songs) is also her weakness.

this is only a weakness in terms of her crossover potential, not in terms of the actual album or songs

really liked your recent feature in the guardian lex!

ashley monroe's like a rose

^^^

xp thx dyl

one of my favourite moments on like a rose is the "you got me"/"the morning after" double-header midway through, where she first uses unhealthy romantic obsession as a metaphor for substance addiction and then vice versa

also "you got me" is her str8-up most gorgeous melody

Agreed. Title track second.

I like Like a Rose more than 12 Stories: funnier, more gothic, better sung. but I'm delighted we have both! think I prefer the 2nd Pistol Annies to the 1st too

cma new artist of the year

the new(?) song she has been doing on her tour "rainbow" is really beautiful

also this happened

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFzv-UdAm7A

Surprised to find out that Brandy Clark wrote a chunk of this album, because I've played Same Trailer Different Park more than most albums this year and can't get into the Brandy record at all. Partly because its character observations just feel dull to me, whereas the Kacey album has so much more spark and wit.

I've played the Caitlin Rose album a ton this year as well, maybe that's at the slightly indier end of the spectrum but it's also great.

Miranda Lambert is the one with the really undeniable vocal presence though - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hits so many different registers and comes screaming out of the blocks faster than most albums I can think of.

Listened to STDP for the first time yesterday. Wow, goosebumps, instant love. (NB I almost never listen to country music. The last time was probably Gillian Welch, if that even counts, which it probably doesn't.)

I wondered if I was overrating STDP because of the novelty of finding a modern country album I like but damn it holds up

also this happened

collllllddd

i'm not sure about the timing, but maybe she was pissed about being censored on the tv broadcast of her performance of 'follow your arrow' during the show?

http://tasteofcountry.com/kacey-musgraves-follow-your-arrow-censored-2013-cma-awards/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnkfiLvZUIk

It's a bit of burying the lede there. After all, TV/radio has a long history of censoring mentions of drug use. Granted, it's erratic, but it'd be more of a bad thing if they somehow subverted or censored the sentiment of the song rather than that one detail.

that is what i expected at first - maybe that they'd censor the 'kiss lots of girls' part.

but oh well, censorship is censorship, can't make an artist happy.

the censorship was so puzzling because they left in her mention of crack

"you're on crack" among a country audience is not an unrecognizable metaphoic insult
"roll up a joint" as a recommendation followed by "i would" is to raw for a still criminalized action
unless you're talking about hitting somebody or shooting obama i guess

"roll up a joint" as a recommendation followed by "i would" is to raw for a still criminalized action

predictably my fave line on the record

Also, "you're on crack" is a pejorative.

dude, i misspelled "to" so probably best not to split hairs

Just say you were on crack and it's all good.

brb kissing lots of girls

She's coming to town next year, opening for Lady Antebellum and tickets are pretty cheap (and by cheap, I mean $30). Should I go? On one hand, Kacey. OTOH, Lady Antebellum.

Lady Antebellum have at least half an album of good tunes, and "Downtown" is fabulous.

I'm getting the sense from this thread that a lot of what people love about Musgraves comes down to the lyrical content, something that rarely matters in a big way for me as a positive (though it can matter as turnoff) about music. This especially jumps out in xhuxk's review. Maybe I read it too quickly but it seems overwhelming about what the music is "about." Also, all of this: popular music talking about the underbelly of society! excitement is a bit puzzling. I know we are talking country specifically, but is it really that unusual country? I'm sure I must be missing some more basic musical appeal here. It's probably just not (currently) for me, I still am not much of a country fan; though I have been checking out a little Leann Rimes (I love "Blue"), inspired by talking with a young aspiring country singer I know with a much less than six degress of separation connection to Rimes.

It's not that I find what I've heard of the Musgraves album unpleasant, but it just doesn't excite me. I'll probably try again at some point.

that's why I prefer the Ashley Monroe album: it's more interesting musically.

x-post

To pick it up from a different end, I'd be interested in hearing more about what people like about the way this music sounds. Maybe I've missed it. I know there have been some specific (but general) comments on what's special about Musgraves' delivery.

inspired by talking with a young aspiring country singer I know

A very young, not unattractive aspiring country singer, tbf.

I'll be honest, I came to Musgraves as mostly an outsider to modern country music, like besides T. Swift, Miranda Lambert, etc., so I don't really have a lot to go by besides lyrical content.

Well, the music doesn't sound like Def Leppard, so that's something that sets it apart from a lot of radio country. It's not afraid to be quiet or sound like people playing in a the same room. It's not afraid to be thoughtful or sensitive or sound like something other than the soundtrack to kegs being loaded off the back of a pick-up because Friday night woooo! I mean, it's no avant-skronk boundary pushing fusion or anything but Musgraves seems to recognize that there are various boundaries in country music just as she recognizes that there are subtle and smart ways to sneak past them.

Well, the music doesn't sound like Def Leppard

And xhuxk still likes it?!

it's an interesting question. i normally don't put a ton of importance on lyrics -- a lot of my favorite songs i still don't know the lyrics to, and i'll just sing along in some soundalike gibberish if i'm so compelled -- and yet i do think the lyrics on this album are especially tough to separate out from its sound (and indeed, at her recent show, i found myself singing along to every single word). sometimes what i love about the way the record sounds is how well it evokes the lyrical content: the guitar solo at the end of the "i miss you" chorus as a lonely call; the carefree lazy sound of the plucked banjo at the beginning of "it is what it is" like a resigned shrug of the shoulders. and sometimes it's in contrast: the warm, softly atmospheric shimmer of "keep it to yourself" only just hinting at the sympathetic subtext underneath her harsh words. but the lyrics are the center of it all -- there's nothing about the sound that's inherently new or exciting or hip, but it works so well for me.

I caught her live show the other night and was impressed. She has a new song called "High Time" that I like quite a bit.

i like that her songs are often about smoking weed

A friend of mine noted how often that seems to be popping up in country. Part of it is a continuation of the hip-hop-to-country crossover.