Consumer Guide Album

Ashley McBryde: Girl Going Nowhere [Atlantic, 2018]
The hot country news in tough country womanhood has enough attitude to stick it to every algebra teacher and Church of Christ deacon who ever looked down on her. But her multitude of good lines yields only two great songs: "Livin' Next to Leroy," the first of what I hope will be many meth-and-opioid dark-siders genre-wide, where her cable-stealing role model ODs while she tokes up at her high school graduation to impress him, followed by "A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega," the grittiest and most utopian of her four I said four road anthems. Like the socko endings she's both blessed and cursed with the voice for, her attraction to this self-replicating subgenre makes me hope that the success she's earned leaves her free to do more with her rosy future than big it up. B+