Issue #58: Carly Pearce and who gets to be "cool"
On what you miss when you miss albums like 'Hummingbird'
By Marissa
In the voracious, growing appetite for country music these days – or shall I say, country music made by white men, really – I have been wondering what happens to the “regular” country albums. The country albums that aren’t made to be pop crossovers, aren’t meant to be indie darlings or Americana breakthroughs, aren’t meant to rock any sort of genre boats or feature some sort of wild (yet strangely predictable) collaboration. Where do those albums go? How do you break through? Country is cool again (?), but who gets to be cool?
I thought about this as I queued up the new Carly Pearce album, hummingbird, on my way to New York last week. There’s nothing quite like some captive time on a plane, in the midst of grief-inspired overthinking, to do some active listening. I’ve long been a fan of Carly’s, and especially how she’s worked to bridge her bluegrass roots with a strong pop sensibility and voice that can run through the twangiest of heartbreak ballads with full emotional fortitude and zero annoying parlor tricks, and I’d been particularly eager to see where she takes her talents in this next phase – i.e. the phase where you’re no longer the new kid or the radio darling, but in the a reliable, maybe a little taken-for-granted artist camp.
I hope people don’t miss hummingbird, because it’s an excellent, very country-sounding record (just as, and maybe more country than whatever folks are getting credit for using a fiddle or two on their otherwise poppy hits) that’s full of whip smart songwriting (“I might be in Oklahoma, but I’m not OK” is pretty gold). But it’s also a really lovely and potent look into life as a woman in her thirties that’s pretty honest and refreshing in a sea of wellness-tinged pop albums: relationships end, life is messy and sometimes there’s so magic solution other than picking yourself up and moving on.
My favorite example of this is “heels over head,” which is about losing a lover to a girl that is more exciting in the bedroom. It’s funny, smart and self-conscious in the right ways, because it’s not a sad ballad….there’s also an A+ pause between “blows your” and “mind” that made me chuckle out loud. Not enough fellatio jokes in country music!
The more somber “my place” comes from a similar point of view - it’s a breakup song, but instead of smashing cars or getting revenge, she’s looking to find a way to move on. “It ain’t my place to question if there’s someone filling my space,” she sings. There’s pain and there’s pining and plenty of what-if’s, but there’s no imagining a different outcome or a fantasy life that could exist if a new woman is pushed away. There’s just the general sense of acceptance and loss that comes with all of us getting a little older, and a little more heartbroken as each year goes by.
There are a lot of great lines on hummingbird (“Rock Paper Scissors” is especially clever), but I think my favorite of them all is the most simple. “He got used to me,” she sings on “pretty please,” a song not about a relationship ending in some sort of giant cheating blowout, but the natural, almost more heartbreaking occurrence of someone just falling out of love and lust. It’s a mature sort of progression, the kind of breakup and breakdown that only really happens when people stick around too long because you’re supposed to be headed down the aisle. There’s no real blame here, just circumstances, chemistry and time. It’s raw and insecure: “tell me I’m pretty, please.”
Lest you think things are too serious, though, there’s one of my favorite recent honkytonkers with “fault line” (I’d love to hear this as a funny duet, “Another Like You” style), and the equally barn-burning “still blue,” that so smartly synthesizes some 90s country vibes without ringing stale or insincere. Pearce is a co-producer on the album, and her touch gives the whole thing a great cohesion - the fiddle does a lot of this work, in where it pops up throughout the record, linking stories and songs together. I don’t know what sort of metric you are supposed to hit to be anointed as such, but that’s cool (and country) to me.
Carly delivered yet again! She consistently releases collections of stellar songs.
"trust issues" -- is great. I love the broken sentence rhyme structure, and it's done well.