Rolling Stone USA - 04.2020

FROM TOP: DANIEL MEIGS; HENDRIK SCHNEIDER

Reviews Music

86 | Rolling Stone

PEARL JAM

T

HE PAST DECADE

in country music

has been a boom

time for small-town truth

tellers — artists like Brandy

Clark, Angaleena Presley,

and Kacey Musgraves — who

countered Nashville’s trucks-

and- tailgates formula with

stripped-down realism. In

2018, Arkansas native Ashley

McBryde released one of the

most striking country LPs

in recent memory with Girl

Going Nowhere; her music

honored Townes Van Zandt

and John Mellencamp, and

she sang with plain-spoken

vulnera bility about everyday

stuff like her platonic room-

On the surface, the record is

centered around her long and

winding dirt road of a career.

The decade of roadhouse gig-

ging she first sang about on

Girl Going Nowhere’s stunning

title track informed songs like

the Bob Seger-ish “Hang In

There Girl” and the Heart/

Fleetwood Mac- channeling

“Never Will,” anthems of

self-determination amid

life-changing success.

With Jay Joyce returning as

producer, the heartland rock

of Girl Going Nowhere is the

primary palette, but McBryde

shows off more of her varied

influences this time around.

The LP’s most exciting tracks

sound like little else on

country radio: “Velvet Red”

is an Emmylou Harris- gone-

bluegrass ballad about an

Appalachian Romeo and

Juliet. “First Thing I Reach

For” conjures the Telecaster

wisdom of Merle Haggard.

Despite her first-person

songwriting safety zone,

McBryde is at her best here

singing about other people,

telling tales of forbidden

romance, small-town piety,

and honky-tonk hair of the

dog. Transgressive lust is a

defining theme, from the

adulteress murder ballad

“Martha Divine” to the dark

sensuality of “Voodoo Doll”

(“Feel the pretty black dress

slipping off her back”) to the

straightforward portrayal

of casual sex on “One Night

Standards.” “How it goes is/

Bar closes,” McBryde sings

on the latter, “There’s no king

bed covered in roses.”

McBryde’s small-town

heroes are as iconoclastic as

she is. In “Shut Up Sheila,” a

family sits around a hospital

room with their dying

grandma; when someone’s

churchy girlfriend suggests a

chorus of “Amazing Grace,”

these smokin’, drinkin’

unbelievers shoot back with

their own agnostic gospel:

“We just go about letting go

in our own way.” Going her

own way is what McBryde

does best.

mate or the folks back home

who told her she’d never

make a living from her art,

delivering each song with a

conviction that felt mythically

down-to-earth.

McBryde’s second major-

label release, Never Will,

is just as daring and deep,

sometimes deceptively so.

MCBRYDE DIGS EVEN DEEPER

A country maverick sings about career dreams

and small-town dramas By JONATHAN BERNSTEIN

Ashley McBryde

Never Will

Warner

4

+++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor RATINGS ARE SUPERVISED BY THE EDITORS OF ROLLING STONE.

Rina Sawayama’s Dance-Floor Euphoria

JAPANESE BRITISH singer-model Sawayama made a splash in 2017 with her debut EP,

Rina. Her first album, Sawayama, is even splashier, suggesting the type of music you

dream of hearing at an unbearably cool party, meticulously unique and fun from begin-

ning to end, whether she’s showing off her love of Eighties glam, aughts pop, or nu metal.

“Every time you see me/It’s like winning big in Reno,” she sings on the fantastic^ single

“Comme Des Garçons (Like the Boys),” making a very credible case that this rising artist

might just become the new decade’s reigning dance-floor queen. BRITTANY SPANOS

BREAKING

Trump administration, the group has blended
the miasmic angst of “Jeremy” and “Alive”
with a sense of tenderness and even flashes
of hope.
Although Trump is not the sole focus of
the record, Vedder gives the president (“a
tragedy of errors,” in EdVed’s words) plenty of
airtime. On “Quick Escape,” a chunky anthem
with an echoey, U2-like riff, Vedder details his
journey “to find a place Trump hadn’t fucked
up yet.” On the surprisingly Springsteen-y
standout “Seven O’clock,” he name-checks in-
digenous leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse,
mythic insurgents who stood up to the U.S.
government, and calls the president “Sitting
Bullshit.” He praises the titular character from
Sean Penn’s Trump-inspired satirical novel
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff between ava-
lanche riffs in “Never Destination” and paints
a bleak picture on the gospel-tinged closing
track, “River Cross,” describing how “the gov-
ernment thrives on discontent... proselytizing
and profitizing as our will all but disappears.”
Yet, where the Vedder of 20 years ago
might have hollered (or hooted) his blues,
he mostly keeps his cool on Gigaton. Album
opener “Who Ever Said” doubles as Vedder’s
mantra for hope, as he sings, “Whoever said,
‘It’s all been said,’ gave up on satisfaction,”
between Pete Townshend-inspired licks and
a New Wave-style guitar solo. The music
itself can be surprisingly upbeat — from the
danceable electro-tinged curveball “Dance
of the Clairvoyants” to the Soundgarden-size
grunge-hulk “Take the Long Way,” penned
by drummer Matt Cameron, to “Superblood
Wolfmoon,” fun frat-party garage rock with
“Louie Louie”-esque nonsense lyrics.
As the band’s first LP since 2013’s Lightning
Bolt, there’s an attention to sonic and
emotional detail, a focus on musical light and
shade, which reflects the album’s lengthy
gestation. The record is sequenced with the
rockers upfront and slower, more meditative
songs at the back, as if the band is exhaling.
“Come Then Goes” is a poignant acoustic
eulogy for a fallen friend (perhaps the late
Chris Cornell), and on “River Cross” Vedder
begs us all to “share the light” over his own
pump-organ line. Gigaton is a testament to
how Pearl Jam’s own deeply held dissatisfac-
tion still burns brighter than ever.