Four star efforts this week from Miguel Mendez and Ashley Monroe.
Ty Myers
Heavy On the Soul: The Fame Sessions
Equally inevitable and unfortunate that he’s already being pushed down a Joss Stone path, with no one having learned any real lessons there. His innate talent is obvious, but so is every seam in the genre cosplay dress-up bin.
Miguel Mendez
The Summer Everything Sucked
I’m tapping the, “Irony is corrosive,” sign, but I’m also not going to be such a hard sell on something that, in its best moments, imagines a foul-mouthed Stephin Merritt cross-pollinating chamber pop with cosmic country. First of his albums I know; correcting now.
Ashley Monroe
Dear Nashville [EP]
Opens with a reflection on not being the Next Big Thing you were supposed to be, then expands into reflections on being unsure of how you ever even know the adult you’re supposed to be. God, she’s just so great, and particularly good singing on this set, too.
Melissa Etheridge
Rise
She’s always been, at most charitably, an uneven songwriter, and that shows up here in how unsure Shooter Jennings sounds from track to track in how to engage, production-wise. She and Stapleton make for great duet partners on the clear standout track, at least.
John Hollier & The Rêverie
Rainmaker
The songwriting’s solid enough, but the aesthetic here is so self-consciously post-genre that it sounds like everything and sounds like nothing at all simultaneously, as though a list of influences would read, “Music, I guess?” That’s tiring after a few tracks.
I agree on the Ashley Monroe album! What a pleasant surprise for her to unexpectedly drop this album on Friday! It’s so good! Of course, I was also delighted by the random Vince Gill shout out in “I Hate Nashville.” I was surprised that Luke Laird ended up being her partner for this project though.
The Vince name-drop was so perfectly executed, and it makes so much sense coming from Ashley Monroe. As soon as I heard it, I thought, “Oh, Leeann’s going to be so happy…”
…i finally got it – there’s a secret contest going on in country music over there: who creates the most creative shot from somewhere in the sticks for the album cover. john hollier surely gets a place of honor at the big table in the never-mind-the-tree-huggers section of the genre.
…ashley monroe’s album leaves me all over the place after repeated listening. not on par with her best effort stuff like “the blade” – one of the most beautiful country albums of this century – or the magnificent “leaver’s lullaby” from the pistol annies’ masterpiece “interstate gospel”. still, it leaves a rather pleasant, albeit not exactly jolly, overall impression.
…the miguel mendez album was some sort of a test whether we still pay attention, wasn’t it? i can’t help but being a sucker for songs dealing with that great phenomenon of “falling off the surface of the earth”. a thought that got me carried away during more than one high school afternoon. also a very commendable effort in the eyes of some is that wonderfully comforting concept of being only a “dreamdate procrastinator” and not living proof of unanswered prayers.
…ty myers? probably the youngest old soul in country music currently. correction: in the world. quite remarkable this young artist. speaking of young artists, cori kennedy’s “hey who shot the water tower” is living proof that there’s more than cold winds and worring ice-news coming from minnesota. some aim at the soul, others at the light-hearted.
The Blade and Interstate Gospel are both such high-water marks that it doesn’t strike me as fair to hold every subsequent release to those exact standards. But, for sure, we know Monroe has one of the highest ceilings of her generation. Does this EP hit that ceiling? No, but I do think it’s a project that works well on its own terms.
I’m not convinced Myers’ “old soul” is anything more than a case of a child playing dress-up. He strikes me as a studio creation more than anything. A listenable studio creation, sure, but I’m just not sure this is the type of music he’s going to make as an adult with his own fully realized agency. He’s *talented*, but I’m still hedging my bets on how those talents will come to bear in the long-term.
Mendez’s album wasn’t a test, but it’s definitely one that I recognize won’t be to everyone’s tastes.
I was a little confused on what Ashley was going for with the EP. After the first few songs I was like “Yes finally back to country” and then “What Are We?” came on and I was like oh ok this will be the weakest then “Steal” and “Haunted”. For the record I enjoyed it, but it came of a conglomeration of her earlier traditional style to her newer orchestral pop sound. I love her voice, but I can’t wait when she goes back to a more traditional sound as she has always been a killer songwriter.
Yes, I prefer her more country sound to the orchestral etherial sound that she’s done for her last couple of albums. I loved her first album and the two that she did with Vince Gill.
Agreed that Monroe shines brightest in twangy, traditional contexts. I think this EP strikes a better balance between her roots-forward work and some of her other influences than did *Rosegold*, which I didn’t particularly care for much, but I definitely think it’s a fair critique.