With so much going wrong in the world every day, you may have been made to feel guilt at some point for telling the world when things are going right for you. On her new album Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves has your back.
Musgraves has never been one to follow the herd, or make apologies. An eloquent lyricist with a strong, clear message of individuality and a preternatural talent for melody, the Texas-born, Tennessee-based singer-songwriter proved herself an expert at mixing the personal with the political on her first two albums, 2013’s Grammy-winning Same Trailer Different Park and the equally solid 2015 follow-up Pageant Material. Country radio’s reluctance to embrace her undeniably catchy songs — which tackled themes like pot legalization, gay marriage and both the good (community) and bad (narrow-mindedness) of small-town living — contributed to a necessary and ongoing discussion about female representation on the dial.
The angst, ugliness and infighting that has characterized much of the intervening two-and-a-half years in America makes what Musgraves has done with Golden Hour feel gutsy in a different way: She’s created an album about being in love and seeing the beauty in the world, or as she put it in a recent tweet, “spreading good vibes, hopefully.” The title references both the stage of life and career where the recently married Musgraves finds herself as she nears 30, and a shout-out to Golden, her East Texas hometown. She touches on where she is as well as where she’s been.
It’s evident that Musgraves is looking to break her own mold with Golden Hour. She recorded the 13-song set at adult-contemporary icon Sheryl Crow’s home studio in Nashville’s Forest Hills neighborhood, and press materials cite reclusive British soul singer Sade as an inspiration. You can hear the influence of the former in Musgraves’ refined singing, and the latter in her exploration of love in its different forms. The kitsch factor that colored Musgraves’ previous records has been dialed way down. So has the sarcasm. Shane McAnally, her primary writing partner on Trailer and Pageant, plays a noticeably smaller role here, contributing to only two songs.
There isn’t much of a party vibe. The core of Golden Hour is a series of low-key love songs that take their time. Some, like the heartbreaking first single (and one of the McAnally co-writes) “Space Cowboy,” are about the end of relationships, but the singer is basking in the afterglow of her recent marriage on most of the cuts. Co-produced by Musgraves with fellow songwriter-producers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, it’s an achingly pretty-sounding record that’s a bit more sparse than you might expect, with her vocals nestling comfortably amid a wide but meticulously deployed palette of instruments.
Golden Hour starts very strong, with opening tracks “Slow Burn” and “Lonely Weekend” complementing each other nicely. “Slow Burn” is quintessential Musgraves, as she sings about trusting one’s instincts and going at one’s own pace. But the tender number also evokes Sufjan Stevens, with banjo, keys, drums and strings gradually introducing themselves, moving lightly around Musgraves’ delicate vocal lilt. “Lonely Weekend,” meanwhile, is the album’s most immediate, relatable song, lamenting the frustration of wanting to go out but being too exhausted from work to do it. She feels “the fear of missing out” and gets all emo about it, then finally concludes that “it’s all right to be alone sometimes.” The piano-driven slow jam “Butterflies” is starry-eyed and sweet, while on “Oh What a World” Musgraves duets with a vocoder, an amusing counterpoint to a lyric contemplating nature and mortality.
The record ends strong too, with an excellent closing trifecta. There’s “High Horse,” a cool, confident kiss-off that sounds something like a countrypolitan Carly Rae Jepsen. Then there’s the title track, which is heartfelt, hopeful and just lovely, and closer “Rainbow,” an unaccompanied piano ballad that’s been circulating in Musgraves’ set lists as far back as 2013. In between, however, the ballads-to-booty-shakers ratio feels off, with the middle third of the record leaning more heavily on sentiment than humor, irony or danceability. Subbing out a midtempo tune like “Love Is a Wild Thing” or the Sheryl Crow-like “Happy and Sad” for another with the clever turn of phrase of “Space Cowboy” — which transforms its title’s meaning by simply dropping in a comma (“you can have your space, cowboy”) — or the energy of “Weekend” or “High Horse” might’ve streamlined things.
With Golden Hour, Musgraves’ attempt to make an album that is “of country” but also a departure — that emphasizes sonic eclecticism over deft lyricism — is bound to be a little polarizing. On the whole, it’s a well-crafted collection of songs that hang together, showcasing her expressive voice, melodic instincts and genuine nature, and it puts out the good vibes she was aiming for.
