Pistol Annies' "Gospel between states" – Rolling Stone



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Pistol Annies – the trio of singer-songwriters Miranda Lambert, Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe – has garnered critical acclaim for her 2013 album Annie Up, a twisted collection of songs about drinking and divorce.

But the album came out at a turning point in the country, started by the unprecedented success of Florida Georgia Line and "Cruise" Nelly, which had been broadcast on the radio a few weeks ago. Annie Up. Over the next five years, most of the majority countries adopted the "Cruise" model: male voices singing to party and women for glamorous and pop-pop production. The ethics of the Pistol Annies, which permeate their classicist country – strewn with despair and misfortune – in deep-rooted arrangements, has not been well received in the confines of the genre for a long time.

Their solution? Duplicating the root mix they have perfected over most of the last decade, they have merged Monroe's eastern Tennessee bluegrass roots, Kentucky hard country rugby and Lambert's honky-tonk of Lambert. On the paper, the latest issue of Annies magazine, like its predecessors, focuses on the type of domestic drama of small cities for which the group became known. Their songs are composed of men and women struggling with prescription drugs, marriages, half-life crises and discomfort (and drugs containing marijuana).

But unlike past efforts, where their stories were based on a heavy dose of black humor, the songs on Interstate gospel convey a much more personal personal urgency. The result, from the homemaker's housewife's harmony on "The best years of my life" to Lambert's haunted "After-divorce" ballad on "Masterpiece," is a sharp sketch of bruised hearts and shaken souls which is the most moving work of the group so far. .

Much of LP 3's success can be attributed to songwriting, which is sharper, deeper and funnier than ever before. Songs such as "When I Was His Wife" and "Commissary" follow John Prine's pathetic crying with laughter, telling stories of misfortune with a smirk. When they spit a trademark ("even old Moses was a case of trash"), they do it sparingly, often at the precise moment when their otherwise sad stories could use a stimulant. And when the group writes in the third person, such as "Cheyenne", an ode to a woman unhampered by subaltern tasks and enthusiastic men, they end up showing more of themselves in their characters than ever before.

Over the past five years, Monroe, Presley and Lambert have experienced each and every one of the upheavals of life – marriage, divorce, childbirth – that they have spent their careers documenting skillfully in songs, and Between states, the Annies sing and write on the other side of grief and eternal love, newly formed families and recently broken families. This album reflects a moving proximity to their material, from the newly-titled "Got My Name Changed Back" manifesto to the lamented "Leavers Lullaby" complaint. "There would be nothing like leaving," sings Monroe with a devastating voice. the clarity on the latter, "if just to love someone was enough."

But the most touching element of Interstate gospel The focus of the group on ancestry and lineage, as well as on how family traditions, trauma and patriarchal practices are passed from generation to generation, may be clearer. "Milkman" is a moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship imbued with deep empathy. The centerpiece of the album is "5 Acres of Turnips" (5 acres of turnips). metaphor, perhaps, for the haunted legacy of the American South. In the song, Presley and Lambert evoke "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry, "King Harvest (Will Will Be Come Come)" from the band and "Merry Go Round" by Kacey Musgraves outlining the raw details of a song. own family buried history. "Generations of shame", sings Lambert, "in the name of my grandmother".

The 14 songs on Interstate gospel Tell a story intimately related to adult concern, bitter-sweet goodbyes and hard-won independence. Several albums of their individual and collective career, the Pistol Annies are less interested in burning the homes of their ex-husbands than burning their own bored life to start anew. "Live wild and exhausted", as the Pistol Annies says. "Pay what it costs to feel so free."

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