“Deeper Well” – Kacey Musgraves

Album: Deeper Well

Artist: Kacey Musgraves

Year: 2024

Genre: Folk Pop, Country Pop

Grade: B+

Kacey Musgraves’s music sits neatly at the cross-section of many different genres, personas and degrees of stardom. She’s a confessional country-pop crooner; a hippie-indie chick who loves her LSD; proud purveyor of hook-laden understated melodies over spare reverb-drenched acoustics; an almost-superstar who is a worthy alternative to Taylor Swift. Musgraves’ sixth album, Deeper Well, is her most folksy and downbeat offering yet, but it still contains the pleasant melodies and careful lyricism that makes her stand out among country-folk-pop contemporaries.

It’s first worth knowing that Deeper Well isn’t ultimately as fulfilling as the superb Golden Hour, yet Musgraves isn’t necessarily aspiring for that. All she wants on this album is a relaxed vibe, which she coolly conjures and luxuriates in throughout 14 hushed same-sounding tracks. The most immediate songs are at the beginning — the title track, with an inspirational lyric of ditching the gravity bong and expanding the mind in a more mature manner, accompanied by comet-streaked dashes of mourning electric guitars and keyboards, is the obvious highlight; “Moving Out” is a close second-best, a melancholy coming-of-age with a brilliant ascending melody that is left unresolved (“We had good times can’t deny it…and we’re moving out”); and “Giver/Taker” is a close next-best, with the catchiest chorus on the whole album.

Yet for the remainder of Deeper Well, the emphasis on airy atmosphere and lack of instrumental variety blends into one. The songs are still well-constructed but somewhat forgettable, especially compared to the heavy hitters at the beginning. And the Olivia Rodrigo-inspired spoken-word section that closes “Anime Eyes” unfortunately sticks out for all the wrong reasons.

Nevertheless, Deeper Well establishes Musgraves as an ever-consistent-if-not-always-great singer/songwriter on the same tier as Swift, Mitski and Lana Del Rey. She’s likely to always release something pretty good, and this 2024 album is another solid work in her discography. Worth listening to, especially the three tracks previously mentioned.

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