COUNTRY The Chicks

Gaslighter (Columbia)

IT’S surprising that The Dixie Chicks didn’t ditch the first half of their band name years ago (they did so amid the Black Lives Matter protests last month) and sever their association with the part of America that dropped them so brutally in 2003. Just before George W Bush began his Iraq invasion, the Dallas band’s singer Natalie Maines said: “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” That now sounds like an example of classy restraint given what celebrities say about Trump, but it prompted CD burnings and death threats from country music fans that could have ruined them.

This is their first album in 14 years, but the delay has nothing to do with what they now call “The Incident”. Motherhood kept them occupied, and now they’re angry again.

Since the last Chicks album, Maines and sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire have all been through divorces, and Maines’s is particularly raw. Tights on My Boat in particular should cause no end of embarrassment for her ex, the actor Adrian Pasdar:

“You can tell the girl who left her tights on my boat that she can have you now,” she spits.

Musically, the sound is restrained and sparse, still rooted in country but with none of the genre’s overblown tendencies. Produced and co-written with Jack Antonoff, known for his work with Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey, songs such as Texas Man and March March are catchy enough for the mainstream but with enough interesting diversions to keep listeners coming back. The controversy has faded but their talent hasn’t.