But while mainstream country leans toward booze, trucks, and arena-scale bombing, Musgraves prefers delicacy, detail, and an ironic subversion of small-town expectations. The title song from her second album entitled “Material for the competition”, she explained, “It’s not that I don’t care about world peace/But I don’t see how I could fix it on stage in a swimsuit.”
Her music values understatement, eschews standard Nashville sounds, and sometimes references Nineteen Seventies Laurel Canyon folk-pop. Like the era’s songwriters and producers, Musgraves is fascinated by folk music and seemingly diaristic, but in addition modestly versed in pop structures and studio possibilities.
Musgraves sang on “Star-Crossed.” marital pressures, skilled jealousy, coping with memories and moving on. The music went far beyond country, combining surreal electronica and sensual R&B. “Deeper Well” is leaner and fewer decidedly eclectic. Written and produced in collaboration with Musgraves’ long-time collaborators Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, the album focuses on acoustic guitars and organic, deceptively transparent arrangements; every instrument shines. Although the album was recorded in New York (at Electric Lady Studios), it is a world away from the hustle and bustle of town; music at all times has a pastoral character.
Gratitude is at the guts of the brand new songs. Musgraves could also be content, but she’s not complacent. He finds omens in nature within the album’s opening track “Cardinal,” which echoes the modal folk-rock of the Byrds with its 12-string guitar. Seeing the cardinal after his friend’s death, he asks: “Are you bringing me a message from the other side?”
In “Dinner with Friends,” she lists the little things that make her blissful – “the way the sun on my floor creates a pattern of light” – and throws in a political barb, appreciating: “My home state of Texas/Those skies and horses and dogs,” after to which he added, “But none of their rights.” And in “The Architect,” a crystalline waltz for string orchestra, she marvels each at natural phenomena – an apple, the Grand Canyon – and on the miracle of finding latest love, which makes her wonder concerning the existence of God: “It’s life that we create, whether it is a coincidence, or fate?” she asks. “Is there an architect here?”
