Like Nikki Lane recently, Margo Price is now getting support from outside the nearby country scene: she recorded her fourth studio album, Strays, with Jonathan Wilson.
Aside from a formidable solo career, Wilson has long since made a name for himself as a tasteful producer and has already produced works by Father John WilsonAngel Olsen or King’s wool Well done – his vibe, hovering from the past, now also flatters Price, which has recently been idle for a few covers/singles/etc., especially after That’s How Rumors Get Started 2020 did not know how to inspire unconditionally. Wilson opens up Price’s sound and stylistic possibilities, though unassuming as the production is, it never feels like the people involved are taking actual risks when the 39-year-old leans a little further out, strays, into Americana and Heartland Rock feels more comfortable than ever, above all allowing more pop than ever before, and six years later All American Made makes room on the guest list again – symptomatically issuing invitations that are less obvious than Willie Nelson or The McCrary Sisters once.
In the short-compact Radio lets Sharon Van Etten Price experiment with the minimalist chugging electro-pop to turn up the chorus for the grand gesture, meanwhile in the soul of the anachronistically lively jingling with nonchalant theatricality Anytime You Call Lucius provide an inviting spectrum. Only the album highlight is even better Light Me Upin which the former Heartbreakers-Guitarist Mike Campbell interprets the folky acoustic vibrancy that awakens from intimacy with Wilson as a freestanding solo in a psychedelic, light-heartedly progressive world that lifts off from the 70s.
In general, the songwriting by Price and her husband Jeremy Ivey not only has a nice range, but also a high level – more distinctive and more lasting than before. The cute Time Machine jingles lightheartedly in a lovable groove, Hell in Heartland is smooth Alt.Country-Rock with a subtly tragic aftertaste, which at the end steps on the gas pedal without obligation and burns up, and the forgiving Closer Landfill is symptomatically warm, soft and comfortable.
Often finds Strays in the growing scope but also not completely to the point.
This is only latently frustrating in the reclining, rocking opener Been on the Mountain (whose gentle soft-hard rock, synthetically adorned, subtly organ-sounding with effervescent vocals always remains as controlled as a handbrake-pushed build-up of tension without a climax letting go – the guitar mixed too far in the background can still solo so ambitiously at the back) and the subsequent bluesy, subdued one Change of Heartthat the intentions of the mainstreamBlack Keys transported in vain.
The theoretically plot-driven storytelling also meanders elsewhere – especially in the two detailed core pieces Country Road (where a slightly sentimental mood of optimism on the piano together with wistful pedal steel has a flair like Joni Mitchell Fleetwood Mac generated) and Lydia (a slow acoustic guitar number with symphonic swaying textures for a poignant, tragic observation in the drug-ridden abyss before abortion clinics). But the atmosphere and depth effect of the record works here as a homogeneous kaleidoscope throughout: the motif of love holds as the final conclusion and leitmotif Strays elegantly together and the horizon seductively open.
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