Strays, Joe

This is Joe K***, roving reporter for the newest addition of the McD***** Family Newsletter, Vol. XXXVIII, Issue 13. Reporting to you live from Northumberland, PA, at the end of a dirt road that goes through an industrial park, a secluded corner of an already secluded rural PA town. Though most of the sound emanating from this rented log cabin along the Susquehanna River are of the I-am-new-to-Mario-Kart-and-it's-frustrating-that-I-keep-losing-to-Uncle-Joe variety, some space has been carved out for the new Margo Price album, Strays, which seems to at least fit the scenery well, aesthetically speaking.

You'd hate to reduce an album to that, though. It's cheap to describe an album by the context in which you consumed it. I do that all the time though. I sometimes think that this weekly review-writing exercise doubles as a sort of personal journal as well. Being subjective, it's natural that I'd enjoy an album more if I have a good week while I listen. The reverse is also true, since there have been plenty of bad weeks out of the past 229 that have cast a pall over the music I'm obligated to write about here. Over time, though, and with the aid of consistency, I feel like I have successfully charted my life's most recent four years through the compilation of album reviews. This week will probably be no different. And being as though the traditional framework of the album review during vacation weeks is that I'm a "journalist," it makes sense that I'd be reporting what's happening on the scene, no? Even though it's flimsy and in some respects takes away from what an album review should be, it's at least a little better than "I was told to turn the music down by my mother-in-law a good half dozen times and I didn't really get a chance to listen to Margo Price all that much."

So, a report: this is good music. I think Margo Price's previous output has been inconsistent at best, with All American Made being at least piquing my interest during the nascent stages of my adventures outside of indie rock, and That's How Rumors Get Started being swallowed by the COVID pandemic and honestly probably for the best. Strays is her best yet. Nowhere close to perfect, but with enough heft and with a few key standout tracks that I can say definitively that Margo Price has never been better.

The good songs on here sound like the nimbus clouds rolling in while the wind starts whipping around—that moment of frenzy before a storm explodes and drenches everything. I get that feeling right at the beginning with "Been to the Mountain," with that foreboding organ and Price a crazed preacher on the hill. I'm doing my best to give sense of the music here, and keep it separate from my own life. Because I don't know if I'd necessarily call this vacation "foreboding" or anything like that. Like, the point here isn't to say that music like the gradual ramping up of insanity on and eventual explosion of "Light Me Up" is in any way thematically linked to this Knoebels family vacation. We can at least rule that out.

Maybe. I don't know. The first night we were here I had to do some pretty wild readjusting, vis-à-vis the alcohol drinking or lack thereof. I'm adapting my role here in real time. Used to be that we could sit around the dining room table and drink a bunch and bust balls. I'm trying my best but perhaps overcompensating a bit. There was a bad moment that first night when my father-in-law was endlessly talking about some play he attended, "endless" because this was like the third time I've heard him talk about it, the same points repeated each time, the mundane details about who the playwright was (Ray Didinger, Philly sportswriter), who he attended the play with (Uncle Ed), who he saw in the audience (some Joe Lero-esque character from his life whose name I know but only because he talks about him like I'm supposed to know that person even though I don't), what the play was about (Didinger as a kid meeting Eagles wide receiver Tommy McDonald). He says something like "it's just a play about the two men" and I say something along the lines of "do the two men kiss?" and Butch takes that like I'm mocking him, and I don't know, maybe to a certain extent I was, which isn't right, like I knew he'd be uncomfortable if I asked him that question but I asked it anyway, and he was uncomfortable, and so was everyone else too because I'm taken aback now because I feel like I overstepped my bounds a little bit as maybe a way of overcompensating from this new thing of being in this situation sober but attempting to make it how it was when I was drunk and I know that's no excuse and Pam says that she thinks that her parents think that I think that they are stupid which is not true I was just doing the whole ball-busting thing as a way to air minor frustrations about having to hear about this fucking Bucks County Community Theater play again. 

Anyways, I apologized the next day, at Knoebels while Pam was buying a hat, so I can't say that Margo Price is soundtracking my week, necessarily. And like I said at the beginning, that's a dumb way to write an album review anyway. The purpose here is to connect to the small audience who is reading the review, to write in universal terms, to give a sense what Strays is about in a way that you will understand. Writing about how in sobriety I'm finding out that being an asshole is harder when you can't blame it on the drunkenness is NOT a universal experience. It fills the page with words and hopefully you're enjoying the act of reading those words, but we are no closer to getting to the heart of the matter when it comes to this 2023 Americana album from Margo Price, which means that this so-called "review" has thus far been a failure.

Though I don't know, maybe the imagery of nimbus clouds and barometers falling sharply was something I can hang my hat on, so to speak. That's hopefully universal enough for you. Though it doesn't tell you the whole picture, just the first couple songs. Consider how "Radio" doesn't sound like that at all, how it's a light, slinky, feel-good back-porch tune about escape from the hustle and bustle, the line "the only thing I have on is the radio" being at once seductive (she's naked) and also high-minded (considering the act of "shedding" all inessentials as a path toward enlightenment). Maybe you find the line "I wanna turn my phone off" as a description of the ideal at this juncture of your life, and you find its placement here in this sentence of this album review as helpful because it indicates that there is a way to personally connect to the music. It is perhaps less helpful when I tell you that I have had my work phone off the entire week and it feels good, man. That's what I'm saying, though. There's a difference between writing a review that highlights the universal human experience found through the album and writing a review that just talks about your life as it was during this arbitrary week. It frustrates me that so often I fall into the trap of the latter. I wish I was better about describing music. I wish I was as good at that as I am at describing my own personal emotions regarding stupid shit no one could possibly care about.

But I'm trying. Like I'm trying to figure out how to describe the sounds in the verses of "Change of Heart." The chorus? Solid. So solid. Great hook with the guitars. But the verses feel... haunted? It's like the tape loop is in reverse, which to me sounds ghostly. I like the effect. Sounds like something the Beatles would do, and like maybe if you unreversed it you'd hear something like "Margo's dead, miss her, miss her." This is crucial to discuss this week, since it kind of diverges from anything we could possibly talk about regarding the vacation. There was the Haunted Mansion at Knoebels, but that was more, like, jump scares than spooky thrills. But that's such a surface-level connection that it kind of makes me nauseous that I even mentioned it.

Nah, unlike the remainder of Strays—e.g. the sad folky heartbreak of "County Road"—the vacation more or less righted itself after that rocky first 36 hours, after we fell into a really nice pattern of chilling in the morning (goofing off, snacking), and then hitting the amusement park in the afternoon and evening, and then, yeah, chilling around the table at night, some of us sucking back seltzers with lime and some of us squishing the bugs that penetrated the screen door barrier and some of us trying to explain how to play the next hot card game. Setting the iPod controls to "County Road" would perhaps betray some underlying sadness in the proceedings, and I don't think that was the case.

Maybe "Time Machine." While not necessarily "party music" (if you can consider playing a riveting game of Soggy Doggy to be a "party"), there is definitely more of a playfulness here than in some of the other songs. I attribute that to the xylophone. Something about it reminded me of Yola's Walk Through Fire. The "Americana" in name but definitely more adult / soft rock / folk / pop in the mix than country. But note that even with my review of Walk Through Fire I'm taking the easy way out and describing what is happening to me instead of what is happening to the music. Context matters in shaping my opinion of music but it's not helpful when I'm describing that opinion to others. Saying that I like Strays because I liked the week Record Club covered it is the equivalent to giving your friends the checklist of what zeitgesty Netflix shows you are currently watching. Your viewing habits tell me nothing about what you're watching or who you are as a person, it's just a circlejerk. Welcome to my album review of Margo Price's Strays.

Speaking of Margo Price's Strays, one of the best things about the album is its malleability. How a song can start as one thing and end as another. Like in "Hell in the Heartland," which is this sort of gothic western drama for most of its runtime; maybe you could even picture it soundtracking the intro credits to some cheap, shitty, poorly-lit Netflix facsimile of Deadwood. Then suddenly, with 45 seconds left, the tempo shifts, and it goes into a second gear. It doesn't change the complexion of the song, but I dunno, it adds a little bit of excitement, a little bonus at the end of a somewhat plainer song. I'm crediting Margo's sensibilities and also co-producer Jonathan Wilson, whose own music sounds like Father John Misty's, not to mention the fact that Wilson has also produced most of Misty's recent albums (not why Pam picked this album, I'm assuming, but makes total sense in retrospect). I'm pointedly not crediting context here, since it took me like 45 minutes to write this paragraph. There were multiple games of charades in the middle. Most of the acting-out consists of one of the kids laying completely still on the ground and saying "no" to guesses such as "snake" and "dirt." "When I woke up this morning / Something wasn't right." It doesn't thematically fit because all is right in my world right now, but I'll probably remember playing charades when I hear that gradual tempo change of "Hell in the Heartland." Awful, awful album review. I'm sorry. Let's try again.

Margo Price has an excellent country music singing voice. Bob used a phrase earlier in the week that's been running through my head ever since: "pop with a twang shit." Indicating that many country musicians have vocals that one could reasonably read as inauthentic. That isn't Price. Hers is the genuine product. The twang doesn't seem affected. It's soothing like a worn and smooth leather boot. I'm listening to her handle the showier "Anytime You Call" and the sadder funeral dirge "Lydia" with equal aplomb. I think that the temptation here is to compare those two songs and to say that the album really blows it with the two slowest and most boring songs tacked on at the end ("Lydia" and "Landfill"), but maybe it makes sense to be worn out after sweating through all the fun beforehand. I swear I'm not gonna say anything personal here, despite how I'm feeling here, now, at the end of this week, having written this review in the spare minutes of the day over the course of five days, having been worn out myself, I will not do it, I will not debase myself, I will not, I promise, I'm not gonna do it, I'm just gonna swallow my medicine and accept that Strays ends on a total downbeat and that's that.

Look, it's all about balance, okay? Music is great because it's shaped by audience experience, I'm not saying otherwise. Music especially, as opposed to like movies or whatever, because music is so often layered on top of other life experiences; e.g. I'm listening to Strays as we're blasting across highways that split farmland in half, and it's not like I'd be in the same situation watching The Idol or some insipid ass bullshit like that. I'm building life experiences here, and that's part of it. But the other part is the music itself, the building blocks, the substance. Too often my reviews are imbalanced toward the former. It's important to me, but I'll cop to the reality that no one is coming here to read a "review" that is totally subjective LiveJournal fuckery. (The actual reality is that most people are scrolling on through, realizing the length of this thing, and skipping completely.)

I dunno, man, it's that kind of week. Ideally, for an album review, I'm sitting on the bus with my headphones on and I'm absorbing this shit. But there are weeks when what matters is what's going on around the music. That's okay. The balance is all out of whack, but, okay, fine, whatever. The music is good and if you really are here to find out whether I think it's good or not, there's your answer. It's good. Not great. I won't make similar assessments regarding family vacation because I know that's not why you're here.

Right, right, the review construct is that I'm a journalist for the McD***** family newsletter. Whoops. Took me so many days to write this thing that I completely forgot about that. Alright, here ya go: This is Joe K***, signing off on another week. Thanks for reading.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5