“Gaslighter” review

ARTIST: The Chicks LABEL: Columbia IN A LONG-DISTANT era of discord suspiciously similar to the current day, Natalie Maines, the singer for the group that was, until last month, known as the Dixie Chicks, lit a forest fire with an offhand insult about George W. Bush in 2003. Since then, she’s owned her political words more deliberately by laying into Donald Trump on social media, not onstage. But listening to her now, all you can think is: Man … the politicians got off easy. Because on the newly renamed Chicks’ first album in 14 years, Maines savages her ex in ways that make it seem as if she were mincing words or pulling punches back when she was taking on mere presidents. She’s got your civil war right here: “Gaslighter” might count as the boldest and most bracing entry ever in popular music’s long and storied history of divorce albums. When the collection’s title was first announced, some fans mindful of Maines’ political leanings may have been led to think it would be a musical op-ed. It fulfills that just once, in the song “March March,” which name-checks Emma Gonzáles and her anti-gun-violence youth brigade, and which only glancingly references Trump (and Putin) with the pointed line, “What the hell happened in Helsinki?” Otherwise, though, it’s a different hell Maines has on her mind. The marital theme is established right off the bat with that title track, which eschews any topical connotations in favor of something closer to the 1940 film “Gaslight,” in which a woman becomes aware her husband is trying to drive her insane. The bustling, harmonically layered music for this thematic overture — co-written and co-produced, like the rest of the album, by Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde) — is almost absurdly cheerful. But don’t get too used to that — the music soon comes to match the weighty subject matter. Moments of jolting, autobiographical detail abound on “Gaslighter.” The title track is already famed for the line “Boy, you know exactly what you did on my boat.” In the telling “Sleep at Night,” Maines ruefully recalls her naiveté: “Remember you brought her to our show at the Hollywood Bowl / She said, ‘I love you, I’m such a fan’ / I joked that you can love me as long as you don’t love my man.” It’s like hearing Beyoncé’s line about “Becky with the good hair” play out at album length. If her ex, Adrian Pasdar, were a singer

songwriter, too, maybe we’d get an interesting response record out of him. Since he’s not, it may be useful to remember that we’re only getting one side of a 20-year story in “Gaslighter.” But it’s some story, with Maines making for such a transfixing firebrand that it might take a second listen to register how devastatingly she conveys deeper levels of hurt. In other words: Come for the come-uppance, stay for the vulnerability. Back-to-back tracks deal with the effects of divorce on kids — “Julianna Calm Down,” a song of encouragement that gets around to naming all of the children of Maines and bandmates Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire, followed by “Young Man,” which urges Maines’ son to “take the best parts of” her ex; “leave the bad news behind.” The record returns to first-person aches with “Hope It’s Something Good” and “Set Me Free,” which is your standard pop ballad urging an ex, in the most anguished terms, to just sign off on the paperwork. On these final numbers, Maines’ famous sideman father, Lloyd Maines, slides in with subtle, soothing steel guitar, much as a dad might try contributing quiet solace in real life. The one truly frisky track, “Texas Man,” is a successor to “Cowboy Take Me Away” in spirit, if not its eccentric sound (with fellow Texan St. Vincent adding guest licks). But while the initial singles might have made it sound like Antonoff was abandoning the simple approach of Rick Rubin on the band’s previous release in favor of his knack for ear candy, he does gets to that sweet spot as the album progresses. Even the poppier numbers are finger-picking good, and he knows when to leave a tender moment alone, or spotlight Maines’ dry, emotive vocals, Strayer’s banjo and Maguire’s fiddle in a reverb-free room. Antonoff knew what he had on his hands here: an album in which each new incendiary lyrical moment seems to top the last, before grievance gives way to beautiful grief. Candor, take them away.

CREDITS: Producers: Jack Antonoff, the Chicks. Songwriters: Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, Emily Strayer, Jack Antonoff, Julia Michaels, Justin Tranter, Annie Clark, Teddy Geiger, Ross Golan, Ian Kirkpatrick, Dan Wilson, Ben Abraham, Sarah Aarons, Ariel Rechtshaid, Charlotte Lawrence, Hayley Gene Penner, Joseph Spargur