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‘Deeper Well’ vibrates with the excitement of a fresh start. The sixth LP from country crossover star Kacey Musgraves lives in a state of suspended animation, reeling out self-care mantras without worrying if they will seem embarrassing years later. Relationships and stoner jokes have preoccupied the 35-year-old’s work since the beginning – “I ain’t pageant material / I’m always higher than my hair”, she sang in 2015 – but here, she posits a way out from both: moving on and never looking back.
Musgraves’ assertiveness feels like a real glimmer of light amid the sparse compositions that run through this thoughtful, imperfect, down-to-earth record. On the title track, she sings of preserving her energy by cutting out time-wasting people and putting her gravity bong back on the shelf, vowing to quit lighting up. The relief in her voice sounds as gleeful as running a kite down a hill. For listeners, it felt genuine enough to inspire a lengthy Reddit discussion titled: “Is Mama Musgraves’ new track making you reconsider your relationship with weed?”
While the songwriting on ‘Deeper Well’ wades into the personal, the music feels soft and occasionally pallid. Emotional beats rise and fall to the tune of sweeping, barely-there synths (‘Cardinal’) and clusters of background harmonies (‘Jade Green’). The kitschy production flourishes that defined her earliest work, or the fluorescent charm that came later on (the Grammy-winning ‘Golden Hour’ and its follow-up, 2021’s ‘Star-Crossed’), are largely absent, save for ‘Anime Eyes’ and its funky strut.
Conversely, this slower pace gives Musgraves the space she needs to soar as a vocalist, but it also throws a few lyrical missteps into focus. “The money and the diamonds / And the things that shine / Can’t buy you true happiness,” she sings on ‘Lonely Millionaire’; ‘Dinner With Friends’ lavishes too much time on a seemingly anonymous crush. Vague allusions aside, much of the record feels lovely and sad at the same time: built around an honest instinct, these songs are a direct response to new feelings.
‘Heart Of The Woods’ opens with a ringing acoustic guitar out of Father John Misty’s ‘Nancy From Now On’, and much like another standout ‘Nothing To Be Scared Of’, it’s here where Musgraves’ self-reflection sparkles. The latter takes stock of her past few years: catapulting to unrelenting levels of fame in the US country world, quitting weed, zipping around the globe in the midst of a divorce. It’s compelling and generous and invites a burst of empathy.
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There’s a deliberate defiance in the title for Lucy Rose’s fifth album, ‘This Ain’t The Way You Go Out’. Speaking to NME earlier this year, she detailed the health issues she faced post-pregnancy that left her with eight broken vertebrae in her back: “Life was definitely upside down – I couldn’t walk or move, and breathing was excruciating”.
She credits a community of musicians – Paul Weller, US rapper Logic and producer Kwes – as encouraging her to create with freedom as she navigated her recovery. ‘This Ain’t The Way You Go Out’, then, is less about bold statements but recognising the quiet, personal victories on that journey. On ‘Over When it’s Over’ she sings that they’ll find “our way through” an embattled situation with both grit and grace. It’s particularly moving after ‘Could You Help Me’’s appeal for some kind of healing: “Now I’m learning / How terribly lonely illness is / On a hard day / Has there ever been another way?”
Now, she brings in a dancey shuffle to ‘Could You Help Me’ and ‘Life’s Too Short’ and a fearless veracity on ‘The Racket’; these are some of the most interesting and sonically varied songs of her entire career. This is, one hopes, the start of an intriguing new chapter.
