This album is interesting juxtaposed with last week's Houndmouth. Whereas there we had genre bending honkytonk country fusing with alt rock pop, here we have a self-affirmed "country bumpkin" singer songwriter. "Singer-songwriter" is an orthogonal description for genres, yet in so much time it has curled back onto itself and become a self-standing form of identification. Sure, you listen to this and you know it's country from the voice, accent, subject, whatever—but singer-songwriter feels appropriate.
Therein, the joy of this album is in the executed autobiographical singer-songwriting. At peak, Loveless is singing your own thoughts back at you, even the ones you didn't know how to verbalize or were too ashamed to. Basic drumlines paired with simple but catchy basslines fill in between the meat. "Dead Writer" shows the most ambition here, but plenty of other songs display little flourishes for variety. "Can't Think" has a crescendo that disrupts your thinking. "Wringer"'s riff and pacing makes you feel stretched out. But these are amplifications—the lyrics are what keep the songs in memory. Because she uncannily captures my unique feelings (i.e. September is a cursed month), the other songs may be as affecting to someone else in a reverse Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. The sum of it all is an album that isn't extraordinary, but hits enough extraordinary notes to be memorable.
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