Kacey Musgraves blows past country boundaries on ‘Golden Hour’
Kacey Musgraves made inroads in the last decade as a country upstart with earthiness and wit. She tied together the genre's traditions (pedal steel and banjo in the recording studio, rhinestone and cowgirl boots on stage) with pithy, observant lyrics about smalltown life.
On her seventh studio album, “Golden Hour” (MCA Nashville), the singer-songwriter doesn't get hung up on genre. She's made a style-hopping pop album that infuses her songs with a relaxed spaciousness while muting, but not ignoring, her country roots. For subtext, Musgraves has found new love and says she dropped acid while in the midst of writing and recording, which may explain the neo-psychedelic haze that hangs over several songs.
Opener “Slow Burn” immediately Kacey Musgraves GOLDEN HOUR MCA Nashville
redraws the boundaries. Even as a banjo percolates in the background, a sense of wonderment prevails amid the loping dreaminess, evoking “Harvest”-era Neil Young more than a traditional Nashville-style storyteller. There's also a mission statement, all the more potent because she delivers it with such calm resolve: “I'm gonna do it my way, it'll be alright/ If we burn it down and it takes all night.”
This sly country rebel doesn't quite burn it all down with this album — its boldness is still couched in solid, fairly traditional verse-chorus songcraft, but there are detours aplenty. “Oh, What a World” kicks in with vocodor-enhanced vocals and gives the twangy accoutrements a spacey glow. “Lonely Weekend” underlines the chill-out atmosphere with Caribbean accents and echoes of “Rumours”-era Fleetwood Mac. “Mother,” the album's shortest, sparest song, is an acid reverie about how family ties become life lines that transcend distance and time.
Musgraves doesn't have a particularly big voice, but it's knowing and nuanced, and she puts her faith in the words rather than showy displays of technique. On “Love is a Wild Thing,” she's unafraid to show the small cracks of yearning in her voice and turns a potentially cliched sentiment into something far more potent. Still, she hedges a few bets. Nashville pros help with the production and songwriting, and they keep this album from becoming quite as radical a statement as it might have been. Tracks such as “Wonder Woman” and “Velvet Elvis” drag “Golden Hour” back toward assembly-line country-pop.
The singer is best when she upends convention. “High Horse” recalls the sassiness of her previous albums, but this time it's dressed up with a strutting disco bass line. Some of her change-ups are more subtle, notably “Rainbow.” An impressionistic piano ballad, it drapes its tale of resilience in the symbolic colors of the LBGTQ pride flag. Like much of “Golden Hour,” its warmth masks its defiant, subversive edge. Listen more closely, and it gleams just beneath the surface.