Let artists try something new!!
Review of Kacey Musgraves' newest record "Deeper Well"
Deeper Well—Kacey Musgraves
Released March 15, 2024
Deeper Into The Well (Expanded Edition)
Released August 2, 2024
The neat thing about music, whether streaming or on physical media, is that your favorite album doesn’t magically disappear when that artist releases a new one. If the artist tries out a different sound or style and you don’t like it, you can always go back to the album that you did like. Much of the criticism for Kacey Musgraves’ two albums post-Golden Hour seem to be that they’re not Golden Hour. While her most recent release Deeper Well is a more subdued Musgraves than you might expect from an “erstwhile country radical” as Pitchfork music critic Laura Snapes calls her. But what I liked about Deeper Well is that it’s not another Golden Hour. That album was a huge turning point in her career and earned her a Grammy, so there’s no denying the impact of that album, but it would be a disservice not only to Musgraves as an artist, but to the legacy of Golden Hour as an album if she were to release Golden Hour 2.0. I can see the reviews now—there’d be complaints that’s she trying to recapture lightning in a bottle, trying to appease fans and critics and reclaim her former achievements after the much less critically acclaimed star-crossed. In whatever was to follow Golden Hour, Musgraves was damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. But I think it should count for something that Musgraves didn’t do that, she didn’t try to go back and make the music that others think she should make, but rather she went back even further and returned to her folk and Americana roots.
Before reviewing this full album, it had been slowly creeping its way onto my playlists for months. I was all about the single “Deeper Well” for the longest time, but then “Cardinal” was on repeat and lately it’s been “Too Good to be True.”
“Cardinal” is about Musgraves’ mentor and folk singer-songwriter John Prine. As I was looking at other reviews for the album, Snapes mentions in her assessment that there’s a creeping theme of death on this record, which we see early on in this first track with Musgraves looking for a sign or message from the other side and on “Dinner with Friends” where she’s looking around and thinking about what it’ll be like to miss that moment when she’s gone. It’s an interesting lens to look at this album with, and not an immediate one that comes to mind, so I’ll be listening out for more of those moments throughout the record and its expanded edition.
My other favorites on this album are “The Architect,” “Lonely Millionaire,” “Heaven Is,” and “Nothing to be Scared Of.” My least favorite song from the beginning was always “Anime Eyes,” just like I didn’t love “Velvet Elvis” when I reviewed Golden Hour, but in my continued listens, even my least favorite songs I have grown to not mind so much.
While I really did grow to love this record, I couldn’t help but still find moments on this album that reminded me of songs from other artists. For example, “Moving Out” sounds lyrically like Kelsea Ballerini’s “Penthouse” from her own country girl divorce album Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. The very beginning of the song also has a John Mayer-esque guitar sound that made think this could have been heard on Heavier Things. “The Architect” in its questioning and its need to understand the greater vision reminded me of “The Prophecy” from the Anthology edition of The Tortured Poets Department.
As I was listening to this album and gathering my thoughts, Musgraves announced the expanded edition of the album, titled Deeper Into the Well was to be released on August 2nd. Of these additional seven tracks, my favorites are “Ruthless,” “Superbloom,” and “Arms Length.”
“Little Sister” was particularly striking to me, even as an only child. The love could so strongly be felt through the words of the song that it was just, in a word, gorgeous.
“Flower Child” and “Superbloom” have more of that disco country/folk vibe that I loved on Golden Hour, particularly “High Horse.” I had an internal debate of which of these were most like “High Horse,” but in truth they’re both in that style and vibe that I am just loving right now.
Where those two songs showcase the disco-side of Musgraves, “Arm’s Length” and “Irish Goodbye” highlight her sharp, striking writing that some writers maybe thought was missing from the original release. It was these two songs that confirmed for me that, for as painful as her divorce must have been from the songs on star-crossed, whatever situation or relationship that inspired this album must have cut even deeper. On “Irish Goodbye” she writes “I thought this meant more, but I guess it’s alright.” OUCH. And on “Arm’s Length”— “Even my savior complex couldn’t make it work.” I can’t tell if that’s more of a dig at herself or the subject of the song, but in either case it is raw.
Just before the expanded version was released, I had picked up a vinyl copy of the originally released album at my local Target where it was on clearance for $17 and if you’ve seen how pricey vinyl can be, especially for new releases, you’ll know this was quite a steal. But when I heard about the expanded version, I was afraid my newly acquired physical copy would feel “incomplete” without these additional songs. But as much as I enjoyed the expanded songs, I’m happy to have the original version as is on vinyl and the additional songs on streaming for when I want them. I would, however, like to petition artists to hold the pre-sale of their vinyl records if they know there’s an expanded version of the album coming. (What I would give for a TTPD: The Anthology vinyl or Hozier’s Unreal Unearth with the two additional EPs)
I’d agree with other reviewers that this was a “thoughtful, imperfect, down-to-earth record" (NME) and her "most sonically cohesive album to date.” But as you might have guessed already, I don’t agree with how other reviewers seem to pine after Golden Hour like somehow by this album existing, it means Golden Hour no longer does. Rather than this being an album dealing with the aftermath of being “burned by the spotlight,” this feels like a moment of reflection and resetting after the dust has settled. Particularly if we look at her last three albums as a whole, a triptych portraying the last six years of Musgraves’ life in three acts—we see Golden Hour as this lovely, floating on cloud nine, start of a beautiful love story, star-crossed shows the sudden decline, the betrayal, the hurt, the reckoning, and Deeper Well is the processing, the opening up to love again and yet it still doesn’t work out, but she’s stronger this time. Snapes hits the nail on the head, writing that the biggest takeaway of this album is that “Comfort and care are life’s biggest prizes and the fear of upending that careful balance is what keeps you up at night.”
Reviewers have also lately taken issue both with this album and others, including Ariana Grande’s most recent record and work from Lorde, Billie Eilish, Clairo, and Taylor Swift for their use of astrology metaphors and “therapy speak.” Laura Snapes describes the use of these references as “ways..to venture relatability without disclosure.” But this trend doesn’t irk me as much as it does them. What does irk me is a trend I’ve noticed in the last year or so of artists writing qualifying statements into their lyrics lest they be cancelled for a line taken out of context. Take again another example from Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. On her song “I Hate It Here,” she qualifies her memory from childhood of wishing she could live in the 1830s by saying “but without all the racists.” After the album came out, many zeroed in on this line, some saying it was harmful and “regressive”, others thinking it was just awkward. Musgraves likewise includes an awkward phrasing on the song “Dinner with Friends” where she’s talking about her love for her home state of Texas, “the sky there and horses and dogs, but none of their laws,” making a point about the state’s extreme laws around abortion access, which some felt was flippant about the seriousness of the limitations placed on reproductive rights in Texas. In both cases, I feel like Swift and Musgraves would have been better not including those phrases in the songs at all, but I can understand why they maybe felt like they had to so that their words wouldn’t be taken out of context and twisted into an endorsement for ideas and policies they don’t support. And while I fully understand calling out hurtful language or harmful behavior from celebrities and public figures where it is warranted, I don’t know if songwriters adding clunky disclaimers to their lyrics out of fear of online outrage is quite the social reckoning many of us want to see.
I was recently listening to a TikTok music reviewer’s livestream and he was talking about an artist who’s a good songwriter, but doesn’t have a very distinctive voice, like anyone could have been singing the song and you wouldn’t immediately think of this artist in the way that when you hear an Adele song, for instance, you know it’s her. But I think in the case of Kacey Musgraves, she’s established her songwriting credibility and she has not only a distinctive singing voice, but a distinctive cadence. Even across the three albums of hers I’ve listened to and the variable differences between them, what’s always present is this specific cadence that just sounds like her.
This album has made me a full blown Kacey Musgraves fan. I love her voice, her songwriting (even if others think she’s lost her severity), and her overall musical aesthetic. I love that she always includes a little country disco moment. To me, she feels authentic, I believe her and the words she sings. Don’t get me wrong, I love Golden Hour, but I really love this record too. I just hope more are willing to give the rest of her albums a chance and don’t expect them all to be recycled repeats of her biggest record.