Strays - Margo Price: Review

Margo Price

is a Nashville via Illinois country singer who released her first two albums on Jack White's Third Man Records. Between her second and third albums, she shifted to Loma Vista and Strays marks her second project put out on that label.

Review by Lav:

Margo Price has been a beacon of country music for a number of years now. I fell head over heels in love with her debut album Midwest Farmer's Daughter and while I didn't love either of her next two records quite as much I still enjoyed her genre fluidity and the unique flavors she brings as a songwriter. I bounced back and forth on some of the singles from Strays and while it might be her most inconsistent project to date, it also has thematic throughlines that make it worth listening to in its entirety.

The record was teased with three singles and I'd like to just skip right to what I and pretty much everyone else seems to agree is the best song on the album. Change Of Heart kicks off with a Black Keys-style guitar riff that grabs my attention right away and comes paired with this whiny little synth line that I also quite enjoy. What really sells the song is Margo's confidence in refrain after refrain making for one of the best songs on the record. The other huge highlight on the record is Anytime You Call which I can see bothering some people with its slow pacing but I just love the bounciness of the instrumental and the soaring vocal harmonies. It's good in an old fashion way that I have no qualms about loving. 

Another thing I can say for the record is it's arranged in a way that feels very sonically consistent, opening up with some of the harder-hitting songs to establish Margo's credibility before the gets more meditative and introspective later on in the album, This means that the opening run of heartland rock flavors on songs like Been To The Mountain and Light Me Up is pretty essential setup. While I don't love either song I also find myself enjoying them with every re-listen to the album. The former is a track I bounced back and forth on as a single and settled somewhere in the middle with its cheeky blend of Americana and some heavy-handed heartland rockisms. By comparison, we have Light Me Up whose first build is just okay but across the final two minutes it tears everything down and rushes back to a final climax that I really enjoy.

I've also come around to the way that the record finishes off. I wasn't a huge fan of Lydia as a single but I think it works better as an album cut. It's the second 6-minute song on the album but it uses that time much better to tell a really detailed narrative that feels more folky than country. At the very least the story is engaging even if the performance lacks a bit of theatricality that I think would help sell it. The closing track Landfill is better and feels like a really strong way to end the album off. It's so poised and gentle in how confessionary it is but the whole thing still feels honest in a very dejected sense. It helps bring the record's self-reflection back around to a satisfying conclusion. Even if it feels a little dry at points, that seems like it's by design. 

Unfortunately, the record has an Achilles heel and it's a run through the middle of the tracklist that includes almost all of its duds, with very little relief in between. I think the first slip up comes on Radio which I was pretty excited about given it sports a Sharon Van Etten feature. Save for a lone twangy guitar on the hook it's a shift pretty far away from Margo's pop sentimentalities but it's that same hook that kills the song for me. Even though it's fine at first they really do beat it to death and then when the song ends completely out of nowhere it all feels incomplete.   

I'll give Hell In The Heartland credit for some instrumental elements that I like quite a bit. The keys in particular sound great and I just enjoy the generally ominous cloudiness of it all. Unfortunately, it's contrasted with some painfully on-the-nose lyricism that really takes me out of the moment. I appreciate the sentiment of the song I just don't think it translates well. That songwriting deficiency also translates to my least favorite song on the album and one of my least favorite Margo songs ever, Time Machine. The track is hokey in all the wrong ways and all the ways Margo has avoided for so long. There's clearly meant to be something tongue-in-cheek about what it's doing I just don't think she actually pulls it off on the song and I'm kind of surprised to hear Margo releasing something that feels this corny. 

While this is probably Margo's weakest collection of tracks yet, her talent as a songwriter and conceptualizer shines through and prevents this record from being a miss. These songs are definitely greater than the sum of their parts due to pinpoint tracklisting that really makes you feel the journey Margo is going on across the album. It shows exactly how she's capable of making up for some of the gaps in songwriting to produce a record that's a half-decent listen despite its deficiencies. 6/10

For more Margo, check out my review of her previous album That's How Rumors Get Started here