Next week brings an avalanche of new releases (many of them quite good), so I’m using this slow release week to catch up with a bunch of albums from the past couple of months that left some kind of impression on me.
★★★★
Courtney Barnett drifted away from the barbed Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit shortly after its release, trading its cathartic roar for self-soothing strums. A decade’s worth of running in circles—which amounted to two solo albums, plus a cloying collaboration with Kurt Vile—makes the sudden lurch forward of Creature of Habit feel especially bracing. Barnett isn’t returning the lean noise of Sometimes I Sit, preferring a primary palette that allows her to paint with texture and tempo, coloring with light and shade. The bright, open production gives Creature of Habit a welcoming feel. Barnett doesn’t seem happier so much as a cloud has been lifted, revealing the lithe melodic sense and pungent insights lying within her songs.
★★★
Nashville never has given Ashley Monroe much of a reason to love the Music City. Her initial deal with a major didn’t go particularly well, the two records she released in the immediate wake of Pistol Annies struggled to get airplay,
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