Kacey Musgraves - 2013 Anticipation

it doesn't quite sound as good as golden hour (the multi-tracked vocal is a bit much here) but it's close yeah

The multi-tracked vocals on the verse really bothers me. I've seen critics (Caramanica iirc?) call her voice "thin"; I think it's lovely, but this ain't helping.

her voice *is* "thin", that doesn't mean she doesn't use it to good effect tho

'not bad' is my impression of this one. i thought her last album was fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSIGEn11V6E

pleasant enough golden hour-lite

compressor on the vocals a bit aggressive vocal to my ears

but yes, otm

listening to the album it's actually less golden hour light and more a continuation of star-crossed

her songwriting more subtle, refined

more situations, less concepts

some 90s production vibes too, rnb notes

doesn't sound perfect to my ears, but sounds like something I'll be playing a lot

Very pretty, lovely harmonies throughout. I'm a sucker for some finger-picking and harmonies so this right up my alley. Except for the drums; kill all "lo-fi study beats" drums in music pls

On her softer / politer side, with pretty bland and lifeless arrangements, songs rather indistinguishable. Clearly I miss the pop.

this album is just ok. it's generally pretty but kinda uneven and i'm not really sure what it's aiming for with the production. it has a similar bag of effects lying around as golden hour, but it isn't at all deploying them towards golden hour's widescreen wonder and generally feels much smaller in ambition. it's never really bad but it's rarely that good either?

hell yeah folk rock kacey!

This album is fine. It does not really rock at all. I wish she weren't so wistful daydream navel gazey "it's a new day" all the time, but that's the mode she's been in for a while now, I guess. Music for Walking in the Woods.

This album confirms that, really, she just bores me.

Listened to the album a couple of times at work yesterday and it kept my interest a bit more than Star Crossed did, but it still seems way off the brilliance of Golden Hour. I'm not exactly feeling like I'm desperate to go in for another listen.

I seem to be having the same issue with a lot of the albums I was looking forward to this year. Ariana Grande, The Smile, Erika De Casier, Hurray For The Riff Raff, MGMT, Grandaddy and Faye Webster. None of these are terrible albums at all, I just haven't felt engaged with any of them.

I'm bummed to be in agreement with so many people about this album's consistently pleasant but boring vibes. Hearing any one or two of these in isolation could be welcome but as a whole album, it's oddly monochromatic. I'm someone who thought Same Trailer... and Golden Hour were basically perfect (and the Christmas album too, frankly, for what it was). While I'm glad this album doesn't aim for the same strained conceptual framework as star-crossed, that album at least had the intrigue of someone dealing with personal collapse shortly after reaching their artistic and popular peak--it felt like a little more was at stake. Deeper Well on the whole suggests that she has newfound clarity about life but the music + production seems to prioritize politeness over anything that might approximate revelation or freedom.

It's also weirdly humorless. Kacey can be funny, both in previous music and in interviews and online...where is that person in these songs? I laughed when I opened the CD and the centerfold opens to a picture of her wearing an embroidered peasant dress surrounded by geese and the insert image on the fold-out liner notes is of her holding a chicken...at first I thought it was poking fun at the idea of "back to basics" or something, but the more I listen to the album, it seems like a misguided stab at reaching for significance, like..."You know what's really IMPORTANT? Poultry."

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*