COUNTRY
Amanda Shires, "Take It Like a Man" (ATO)
If there's any justice in the world or maybe just in Nashville, Shires' electrifying new album ought to make this wildly underrated country-music Zelig into a household name.
The instigator of the Highwomen supergroup as well as a solo artist and a member of the 400 Unit, Shires collaborated this time with Los Angeles musician/producer Lawrence Rothman, known for making bold, haunted indie-folk.
While there are a few upbeat numbers here, a misty melancholy hangs over most of her seventh solo album. The title track is a haunting torch song that showcases both Shires' voice — a little bit Parton, a little bit punk — and one of her strengths as a writer, the way her lines can be abstract and concrete at once.
"Empty Cups," which features tight harmonies from Maren Morris, is an aching chronicle of a longtime couple drifting apart. "Can you just stop with these little wars?/Can you just hold on and hope a little longer?" Shires asks on the gorgeous, soulful ballad "Lonely at Night." Perhaps the most devastating song, though, is "Fault Lines," one of the first she wrote for the album, during a period when she and Jason Isbell, her well-known singer-songwriter husband, were navigating what she called "a disconnect."
Isbell plays guitar on nearly every song on the album — the most brutal ones about marital difficulties, and the heartfelt "Stupid Love," which begins with one of Shires' sweetest lyrics: "You were smiling so much you kissed me with your teeth."
In 2022, when success in country music is still tied to institutions like radio that don't reward rocking the boat, being as outspoken as Shires has been on women's rights is a big risk. That individualistic streak makes her seem like a modern-day country outlaw, applying the rugged and righteously combative spirit of elders like Billy Joe Shaver and John Prine to the version of Nashville she finds herself inhabiting — and challenging to change.
