POP/ROCK
Kacey Musgraves, "Star-Crossed" (Interscope)

Country music history is full of juicy divorce records. But Musgraves' frustrating new LP catches the 33-year-old at a transitional point — less a plain-talking country act than a slippery pop star in waiting. So "Star-Crossed," which tracks the dissolution of her relationship with singer Ruston Kelly, invites a different type of scrutiny; it's the kind of album a self-renewing artist makes to pull focus from the evidence of who she used to be.

Musgraves, who grew up in small-town Texas, has been voicing her doubts about tradition — and about the prescribed roles women are expected to fill in life and in art — since she broke out of Nashville nearly a decade ago. With its mellow disco grooves and its lightly psychedelic textures, the gorgeous and moving 2018 album "Golden Hour" effectively reframed Musgraves' career. She extends that sonic experimentation on the tender, trippy "Star-Crossed." The songs blend acoustic guitars and glassy synths.

"Star-Crossed" is actually a less emotional experience than the blissed-out "Golden Hour." Sometimes she catches that small-scale heartbreak, as on "Camera Roll," about resisting the urge to scroll through the photos she can't bring herself to delete, and the exquisite "Hookup Scene," in which she describes how hard it is to replace an intimate connection. The latter might be the most stripped-down number on an album full of colorful production touches, all the better to savor Musgraves' curiously affectless singing voice, which can take on an almost philosophical bent.

More often than not, though, Musgraves' writing on "Star-Crossed" is squishier and more prone to cliche than on her previous albums; she recounts her trip "to hell and back" on "What Doesn't Kill Me." You can hear these soft landing spots as part of the interest in wellness culture the singer has been talking about lately. Or maybe it just turns out Musgraves is the rare songwriter more effective in happy mode than sad — the clearest sign yet that she's left country music behind.
MIKAEL WOOD, Los Angeles Times

NEW RELEASES
Alessia Cara, "In the Meantime"
Esperanza Spalding, "Songwriter's Apothecary Lab"
Jesse Malin, "Sad and Beautiful World"
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, "A Beginner's Mind"