Taylor Swift meets Kirstie and Phil

Kacey Musgraves is asking the big questions on her sixth album. Is there a God? Can you mend a broken heart? Is it ever a good idea to smoke marijuana before breakfast? That final imponderable is addressed on the title track, a torch song in which the country singer ruminates on growing older.

The moment is heartfelt but lays bare one of the flaws of a record more interested in speaking its truth than sweeping the listener off their feet.

In Musgraves’ defence, she has done a lot of living since her previous LP, 2021’s Grammynominated Star-Crossed. That album was recorded in the devastating aftermath of her divorce from musician Ruston Kelly and heavily influenced by Romeo and Juliet.

An aura of Shakespearean melodrama continues to hang about the Texas-born star. Since the end of her marriage, Musgraves has started a fragrance line, bought a cottage in the countryside and broken up with her boyfriend of two years, poet Cole Schafer.

Such upheavals have left her in a meditative state of mind, exemplified by “Moving Out”, a beige ballad about leaving a bad situation behind while also moving house that lands like a mix of Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” and Location, Location, Location.

It is when she departs from that blueprint of setting her diary entries to music that Deeper Well gushes to life. Musgraves sounds like a Swift adjacent confessional pop star on stirring opener “Cardinal” while the Billie Eilish-esque “Anime Eyes” contains charming references to Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki and the manga Sailor Moon.

The record arrives at a curious time for country music. The genre has inspired forthcoming albums by Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey yet, as Musgraves returns, she sounds open to moving in the opposite direction. It’s a shame she didn’t push further. Deeper Well is pedestrian in places but, when Musgraves dispenses with the folksy trappings and embraces her pop side, it soars.