Okacey Musgraves has put the bong down. “I used to wake and bake,” croons the nation crossover star on her sixth album’s transcendentally attractive title observe. “All the pieces I did appeared higher once I was excessive, I don’t know why.” The 35-year-old’s erstwhile weed behavior received’t come as an enormous shock to followers: she claimed her 2018 album Golden Hour was partly written beneath the affect of LSD, whereas its follow-up Star-Crossed took form after a guided psilocybin mushroom journey. But on Deeper Effectively – an album teeming with 60s folks vitality and a way of crunchy, tree-hugging marvel – Musgraves nonetheless seems like she’s tripping. Her drug of alternative this time spherical? Love: new, true and self.
Musgraves, as you will have surmised, shouldn’t be your run-of-the-mill nation singer, and hasn’t been for a while. A uncommon instance of a Nashville stalwart who achieved recognition this aspect of the Atlantic, she turned a breakout star within the 2010s, well-known for her spiky portraits of small-town life and vocal assist for the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. On Golden Hour, an prolonged love letter to her then husband, she integrated electropop and disco into her palette, profitable the Grammy for album of the 12 months. Star-Crossed, impressed by her subsequent divorce, was a restrained and, for some, anticlimactic sequel, but it cemented her standing as a mainstream artist capable of thrive outdoors her unique nation context whereas retaining the style’s sonic markers – a trajectory not dissimilar to pop overlord Taylor Swift’s.
Not like Swift, Musgraves is much extra targeted on channelling vibes than chart domination. On Deeper Effectively, she appears newly unburdened – by expectations of a post-Golden Hour blockbuster; by nation music limitations; by reliving her breakup – and is now luxuriating in therapeutic, back-to-nature goodness, gilded with a distinctly millennial air of self-care (there are references to Saturn returns and jade crystals). It’s a mindset echoed within the document’s mountain-air sound, all new-wave Americana meets Simon and Garfunkel-style acoustic guitar, the type that appears to softly journey over itself. Opener Cardinal, a shimmering, immediately infectious meditation on grief, hope and cosmic love, might be mistaken for a misplaced Fleetwood Mac basic.
The highs on Deeper Effectively are immensely excessive – these are two of essentially the most satisfyingly stunning songs you’ll hear all 12 months. But elsewhere Musgraves’s makes an attempt to channel earnest simplicity fall spectacularly flat, with dashed-off literality masquerading as profundity. She marvels sentimentally on the engineering of an apple on the irritatingly twee The Architect and descends into inadvertently amusing basicness on Dinner With Buddies, which options an amazingly banal eulogy to her “house state of Texas, the sky there, the horses and canine”. (It’s admittedly adopted up by “however none of their legal guidelines”, a uncommon second of progressive chew.)
It quickly turns into obvious that as a substitute of a woo-woo declaration of independence, this album is partially in thrall to a giddy romance (apparently since concluded), which is likely to be why Musgraves sounds so dumbly infatuated with the world at massive. Midway by means of Dinner With Buddies, her imprecise effusiveness is redirected in the direction of the loveliness of her companion – a topic the album returns to love a moth to a flame, with blended outcomes. It’s cute on the psychedelic folk-pop of Anime Eyes, which riffs on the tropes of the Japanese style earlier than crescendoing in a breathless run of references (“Sailor Moon’s acquired nothin’ on me!”). But too many songs really feel just like the audio equal of a fake-candid couple’s selfie, as Musgraves waxes lyrical about her romantic bliss in essentially the most unimaginative phrases. “Made some breakfast, made some love, that is what goals are product of” goes the underwhelming Too Good to Be True. The accompanying tunes don’t make up for it: Musgraves’ crystalline vocals and stylish toplines promote some interchangeable folk-country balladry, however it could all nonetheless stray into blandness (though particular point out has to go to Lonely Millionaire’s irresistibly sultry 90s neo-soul).
It’s uncommon to listen to an album that scales such songwriting peaks with the spectacular one-two of Cardinal and Deeper Effectively earlier than flopping again into whole blah-ness. This album proves the road between chic simplicity and vacant banality will be surprisingly skinny.