Kacey Musgraves - 2013 Anticipation

<3

Been enjoying this album. In Merry Go 'Round, I first heard the "Mary two doors down" line as "Mary Tudor's down" and thought she might really be reaching with a 16th century reference in there.

this album is great! the opener, "Silver Lining", is killing me: the chorus' melody is the catchiest thing I've heard all year. I love the sound of her voice.

is there any feeling that the album's going to be a hit? it seems pretty low key for that. like it reminds me as a really well crafted take on the alt.country tunes I jammed in the 90s; & we know how that was received by Nashville.

huh, wiki says that "Merry Go Round" has sold 524,000 copies already. if so, whoa! yeah, that's a hit

it debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 (behind the Timberlake juggernaut) xp

shit, yeah, just saw that too, #1 country too. that's great!

love the plunk-plunk sound of the guitar on "Dandelion"

it was cool to see her the other night at the ACM awards, nominated for 'top female vocalist' up against the big marquee names

I've listened to this album like five times in a row now, just got it yesterday but it's gonna be one of those records

Favourite line on this so far (among many) is "Every arrow that I aim is true / but I miss you" - such a great couplet

is a real boy is the besssst, and though they've never equaled it in defense of the genre is at least a fun mess. their last record kinda sucked.

omg that's supposed to be in the fall out boy thread. what is this

I can hear Fall Out Boy doing "Step Off."

well yeah my country tastes tend toward "things that could be transparently covered by crossover emo bands"

pop-punk cover of 'stupid' would be pretty easy to bang out in a coupla hours

Well, I enjoyed that very much. The Weezer cover was a little unexpected!

she does a weezer cover?

Looked for you but didn't see you Tim!

Enjoyed her Mama's Broken Heart too - stripped out Miranda's camp, much more sullen. Final song that she said had never been released was amazing

Great concert! Such a beautiful voice. Not to mention beautiful looks omg I was stunned. BUT THE SETLIST WAS TOO SHORT! No "Dandelion" :( :( It felt like that boring opener guy was on for longer.

Love her so much for "Follow Your Arrow" and how she's championing it as a future single.

Best part = her ridic impressive whistling

Not to sound stalkerish but I totes saw you there lex.

Likewise, the Lex (but you said you mightn't make it so I didn't scour the place). Yeah that encore was tremendous, something to anticipate on the next record I guess...

love short sets! I suppose that's one of the reasons why debuts rule.

Anyone heard her three self released records?

can they still be bought?

i'm jealous of everyone who got to see this show. she's opening on kenny chesney's tour but idk how i feel about going to a giant arena show primarily for an opening act.

the more i think abt it the more "follow your arrow" seems like it is destined to be a live/fan favorite that nonetheless will probably not quite work on the radio. glad she is pushing for it tho. i think "keep it to yourself" would be a gorgeous fall/wintertime radio single.

uberweiss you shoulda said hi! i was going to moot some sort of pub drinks beforehand but i had to be elsewhere and sadly missed the opening guy. thought her set was surprisingly long given the album's only 35mins - only songs she didn't play were "dandelion" and "i miss you" (hmm, the most lovelorn ballads), but she played two older songs and the lambert/weezer covers instead.

voice much less diffident than on record - "keep it to yourself" was kind of revelatory, prob my highlight, totally slanted towards the empathetic side, maybe even the subtext that she herself is thinking the same things (and of course ultimately even more ice cold for it).

this is the only trace of the unreleased encore online - it was sort of weird at the time to hear a song that i knew i might not ever get to hear again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULMDI1uRP88

In Washington, in Idaho
In Oregon and away we go
To Tennessee and Arkansas
No we won't stop 'til we've seen 'em all

vs

Man I'm out in Texas, man, I'm out in A-town
Then I'm up in Chi-town or Miami shuttin' it down
It's that New Orleans, it's LA or The Bay
It's New York, Philly, and the whole DMV
I'm a Detroit Player, man it's North-South Cack
Ohio, Pittsburgh, got St. Louis on deck
It's Delaware, Connecticut, it's New Jersey got hella bricks
It's Queens, Brooklyn, and yeah they wildin'
Bronx, Harlem, and Staten Island

she also didn't play "back on the map"

and yeah the setlist wasn't actually short, just in that i wanted it to go on and on.

"i'm ashamed of bush... don't ruin my career" was lol

and yeah lex i should have! but my friend wanted to stay near the front (slightly awkward considering i was probably the tallest person in the room; people behind me must have loved me) and then i didn't see you after the show

She's playing a one-off sort of show here before she heads out with Cornball McHammocktwang. I'm going to try to see it.

Awesome, seeing her in a week now!

totally slanted towards the empathetic side, maybe even the subtext that she herself is thinking the same things (and of course ultimately even more ice cold for it)

this is what i like so much abt this song (not that i saw the performance or anything but yeah)

"Keep It to Yourself" is a highlight; it's sung so tenderly (to herself?) but the words aren't; expresses the relevant ambiguity very well

pretty awesome to end a song, 'mary just don't give a damn no more'—THE END

when i interviewed kacey she urged me to check out someone called brandy clark - i just have and let's just say i'm super-impressed. on first blush fits right into the forthright young country women axis

http://soundcloud.com/brandy-clark-music

"pray to jesus" and "stripes" are the immediate keepers in that soundcloud set but the quality is very high throughout

great great great album btw

She was great tonight. Special radio station show between Kenny Chesney dates. I won a nice poster. My wife left saying she bet Kacey is awesome to hang out with. So charming, lots of fun,

VERY IMPORTANT: if anyone neglected to check out that Brandy Clark album that lex linked to it is pretty much brilliant - at least as good as the Kacey LP tbh, and well worth a listen. It's all available for free download on her soundcloud at 128 kbps and only three tracks have been released as an EP on iTunes, so I don't know what's going on there.

pray to jesus is perfect

crazy women is great

get high is great, albeit a bit pistol annies

illegitimate children is lovely also.

What Will Keep Me Out Of Heaven is THAT COUNTRY REALNESS

it's nice

(Clark co-wrote Mama's Broken Heart and Follow Your Arrow fyi)

"The Dah She Got Divorced " is wonderful!

thanks for the reminder on this; imagine it's going into heavy rotation for a bit.

The lyrics are nothing special -- it's the taunting string arrangement that kills

Yeah, excellent album, thanks to lex for the tip here.

Kree Harrison, a current top 4 contestant on American Idol, is best buds with Kacey, sings on her record, and is I believe the younger sister (or cousin?) of Kacey's guitarist.

Brandy Clark album is pretty strong, especially for being, you know. free.

So has anyone heard Musgraves' earlier releases? Does anyone have any of them? What has she done between then and now?

brandy clark is sad!!!

rural america sure sounds strung the fuck out on the basis of this thread

Brandy Clark is playing NYC this week i think

So has anyone heard Musgraves' earlier releases? Does anyone have any of them?

i was curious about these too. they seem to be extraordinarily rare. the most recent one, self-titled (from 2007, when she was 18) was apparently sold here. but now it is sold out, and, as the site notes, "WHEN THEY'RE GONE, THERE WILL BE NO MORE OF THIS CD... EVER!" however, if you would like to buy a copy, there is one on amazon for $370 rn lol. anyway, apparently the album has a few miranda lambert co-writes on it.

as for the others, idk where they were actually sold. buuut i do see them (+ the 2007 one) on this weird probably-sketchy site called soundsbox?? the preview clips appear to be legitimate... but idk whether to trust the site. it seems to be along the same vein as that alltunes/allofmp3 site from last decade, which sold mp3s for dirt cheap prices and was/is way illegal.

also i am listening to the brandy clark album rn and it is really good!!

The (positive) WaPo review describes it as a "wellness lifestyle record."

Feel free to wince a little upon hearing that Kacey Musgraves is now singing about the holistic benefits of moon bathing and jade bracelets, but please know that unlike other recent pop albums that dabble in wellness woo-woo — Lorde’s “Solar Power,” FKA twigs’s “Caprisongs” — the singer’s new record, “Deeper Well,” totally gets away with it. Why? Because Musgraves is a country star who ultimately believes in Willie Nelson more than astrology, tarot or Goop. She knows that the greatest country songs ever written aim to provide tidy answers to the thorniest questions of existence. Lucky for those of us who think of wellness lifestyles as spiritual make-believe for people with money, those are still the kinds of songs Musgraves wants to write.

(Technically he calls it a "wellness lifestyle album," but same trailer.)

it's a nice little album, but the plaintive directness i admired about the song "deeper well" is an exception among the tracks here, most of which struggle to rise beyond lyrically mundane. it helps that "deeper well" has one of her most classically gorgeous melodies, the others seem to go in one ear and out the other.

Better than where most lifestyle brands would have those melodies go.

I really wanted to play the contrarian in this thread. A mostly acoustic, chill album that doesn’t really have any big singles actually sounds perfectly up my album. And on first listen I was really taken with it. But after a week of many listens I’ve more or less landed where many of you have. It’s a fine record, just ok. I agree that it’s lacking a lyrical sharpness that is really required when musically it’s so unchanging (and maybe four songs too many at that).

Perfectly up my *alley*