Album DescriptionAvailable in:
"Interstate Gospel" is the third studio album by American country supergroup Pistol Annies, and their second with RCA Nashville. It was released on November 2, 2018. It is their first album since 2013's Annie Up.
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 88, based on 6 reviews, indicating "Universal acclaim".
User Album Review
In exquisite harmonies and with lush guitars, they talk about what they believed at the altar, and what they no longer believe now that she was no longer "blinded by diamonds and driven by lust" (on "When I Was His Wife." The lullaby soft "Cheyenne" is a perfect story song about a woman who loves "country music and broken-in boots," who finds "plenty of pool table cowboys to hold her." It is a song that mentions Cheyenne's daddy and grandmother as roots for sadness, but there is a move where the narrator wants to be like Cheyenne, who treats love "as cold as the beer in her hand." It is a song so intense in feeling, and ambivalence, as brilliant as Sammi Smith's "Toast of 45" or Tammy Wynette's "Womanhood."
There are ballads that have the same confidence, but work somewhat between the pleasure of "Sugar Daddy," and the othering of something like "Cheyenne." "Milkman" is a tale of how restrictive life in a small town can be; the song that trades verses between the Annies, about the relationship between a free-wheeling daughter and a repressed mother. The daughter wants her mother to drink on a Sunday, make it past the water tower, pick wild flowers, and more importantly love the milkman in addition to loving her biological family. Cheating songs are often heartbreak songs; a cheating song where a child recognizes how oppressive loving daddy can be, is made even more shocking by how gently the argument is presented.
The last two Pistol Annies albums ranged from very good to brilliant; this album seems to be a breakthrough, a masterpiece that extends their already formidable gifts.
Reviewed by Anthony Easton for exclaim.ca.
External Album Reviews
None...
User Comments