Ashley Monroe surprised everyone last week by dropping this new album ‘Dear Nashville’, less than a year after her last record Tennessee Lightning. With the title and the cowboy hat on the album cover it seemed to indicate this was going to be a return to the country sound of her earlier albums after a few years of experimenting with indie, folk and ethereal pop.
However that thought is quickly challenged when you read the provocative title of the opening song: I Hate Nashville. Inspired by the intense feelings of disappointment and even envy she felt after attending an event in Music City honouring another artist, this is a painfully sad and brutally honest appraisal of her career.
On the surface Ashley seems hugely successful: she’s released many albums as a solo artist, is a member of the Pistol Annies and has written number one hits for other artists. And yet here she admits to struggling and feeling consistently overlooked. ‘Pay your dues / can’t pay your bills’ is an unfortunately a perfect encapsulation of what many women in the music industry have experienced.
The song does honour Ashley’s love of country music, claiming it ‘is the reason I’m alive’ and she name checks one of her old collaborators Vince Gill as well as Paul Franklin, Dolly, Emmylou and Patty Loveless. The sound is soft, swirling pedal steel and understated heartbreak. It’s her best song in years.
What sets this song apart is that Ashley’s perspective is different than those who’ve never made it – she has tasted the dream but still feels frustration and disappointment with the way things have ended up. Through the rest of the album you can hear how she’s still wrestling with the legacy of her country music past, how she can’t fully embrace it but neither move on completely.
In fact the other songs on this album are more in keeping with the dreamy, downbeat sound of her recent albums – just with more pedal steel. What’s great about this album is that by working with one co-writer and producer in Luke Laird there’s a sense of cohesion to the sound that her last album lacked. She’s billed this as a concept album about her relationship with country music, filled with songs about unrequited love and longing.
‘Gettin’ Out of Hand’ is quiet, mournful lament to a doomed relationship where there’s ’just no walking away / it’s way too late’. The spoken word opening of ‘What Are We?’ is a sad appraisal of how things have ended, the feelings of confusion about the relationship.
That sense of emotional upheaval continues on ‘Steal’, which asks ‘what is it about this place?’. Nashville becomes the turbulent relationship that you just can’t quit, that you love anyway despite the pain it causes.
‘Haunted’ is more in keeping with the indie rock bent of her last album ‘Tennessee Lightning’, and is one of the catchiest songs on here. The intoxicating ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Having it Bad’ both have a seductive energy, echoing her ‘Wild Love’.
She finishes with the bittersweet strum of ‘Quittin’ which perfectly sums up how even as you try to move on from situations, musical or otherwise, sometimes you just end up right back in it.
So much for quitting then. ‘Dear Nashville’ is a tentative step back towards country music, and one which I think her fans have been hoping for. While the album may lack the traditional sound and tonal variety of her early work it’s her bruised and emotive voice which gives these songs their power. Dreams might not come true, the music industry might be a heartbreaker but the songs are what matters in the end and these are some of Ashley’s best in a long while.
Highway Queens 
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