RC@5: The Highwomen by the Highwomen

Record Club covered this album exactly five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.

The Highwomen

The Highwomen

Week 43: November 24-30, 2019

In retrospect, it was unfair to make someone else pick the Thanksgiving Week album. It's the shortest week of RC of the year, since Thursday night is usually album-writing night for a lot of people, and assume all of those same people are too wrapped up in holiday traditions in write a review. I vaguely recall Rachel C. being a little bummed that only four people wrote for the Highwomen, which is fair! I hate the idea of RC being a disappointing experience. I've chosen the Thanksgiving album every year since.

It's especially unfair because there is a lot to talk about with this album. And it's Thanksgiving Week again! I don't have time for this shit! Actually, now that I think about, "Crowded Table" is like the perfect Thanksgiving song. Why didn't anyone mention this in their reviews? My excuse is that this was the third of three album reviews that I wrote far in advance, due to the birth of Martha. We didn't do anything for Thanksgiving that year, since Pam was way ahead of the game regarding concerns for infectious diseases and infants (the rest of the world—or at least the non-morons—would catch up in a few months). I guess the table wasn't too crowded. Yet.

The best song is obviously "Highwomen." It's a thesis statement for not only this album, and not only this band, but also for women in country music. A sort of "we are important, and we are many" anthem. It gives me the chills, how epic this fucking song sounds. And yo, what's going on with Yola? Why isn't she a Highwoman? She's my favorite artist out of the five on this song!

I should say that I'm only familiar with Yola because she eventually became a Record Club artist. Maren Morris eventually broke out from the group to become a Record Club artist as well. If this silly little music club stretches to infinity, then we'll get to Brandi Carlisle and Amanda Shires and Natalie Hemby as well. I've heard enough of Carlisle's music in the past five years (from Pam) that I know she's pretty overrated. Amanda Shires has some great solo music that's worth seeking out. She's gotten divorced in the meantime, which is sad, but she was pretty sad in that Isbell doc, so it makes sense, and I'm happy for her. I don't have a Hemby update. Looks like she had a solo album in 2021. It's hard to tell, since Wikipedia is all of a sudden blocked on my work computer for some reason.

My opinion of this album, back in 2019, boiled down to: I can agree with the message without loving the music. I stand by that, but I could see a reasonable argument that the two aspects of the music are too intertwined to separate, and that giving this album a low score was still an attack on women. Okay, I can't convince you otherwise, but here's some pretty compelling proof: I have in the meantime listened to the all-men version of the four-artist country supergroup, the Highwaymen, and I found the music even worse.

Obviously, the Highwomen are structured as an homage to the Highwaymen, which would be evident by the name alone. The Highwomen were on my mind when I listened to Highwayman for A Year of Blind Spots. Reading over that blog post, and comparing it to my Highwomen review, I'd say that it's pretty easy to see that I liked the Highwomen better. So that means I believe that the Highwomen improved on the formula. It also means that I did NOT have mostly mediocre reviews about the Highwomen because of the subject matter. I love listening to music about how awesome women are, because they really are! I think I just like it better when it rocks a little harder!

I think I'd probably bump it up to 2.5 pukes out of 5, if given the chance. It's not a bad album, and when I said it was a bad album, I was being hyperbolic for effect. It's a pretty okay album. A good album if you're feeling good about being a woman. A good album for a week of thanks. A good album for Record Club.