Nashville star Margo Price went from poverty and alcoholism to pawning her wedding ring in order to fund her 2016 debut Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, which topped the UK country charts. But she refuses to let her backstory define her on her fourth album, Strays. Driving organ-rich opener Been to the Mountain finds her declaring “I’ve rolled in dirty dollars, stood in the welfare line” but announcing, defiantly: “I know there’s more here than this.”
Hot on the heels of her autobiography, Maybe We’ll Make It, Strays brilliantly rattles through country, psych and Patti Smith-style poetic rock’n’roll. Written after a six-day magic mushroom session with husband/collaborator Jeremy Ivey, the 10 songs were recorded at Angel Olsen producer Jonathan Wilson’s Topanga Canyon studio in California and have a feeling of wild landscapes as they veer between the autobiographical and the observational.
Former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell brings big rock riffs to the demon-battling Light Me Up. Sharon Van Etten contributes harmonies to the catchy, synth-coated Radio and Anytime You Call builds to a dazzling chorus. Price’s best songs pack powerful lyrical gut-punches. The piano-led County Road is gorgeously reflective but gradually appears to have been written from the perspective of a friend who died in a car crash in her youth, while Lydia’s empathic stream-of-consciousness tale, of a Vancouver woman who “sold herself for synthetic heroin” and is “living off tips and meth”, isn’t easily forgotten.
