Lori McKenna

• Bittertown [Signature Sounds, 2004] ***
• Unglamorous [Warner Bros., 2007] A-
• Lorraine [self-released, 2011] A-
• Heart Shaped Bullet Hole [self-released EP, 2012] *
• Massachusetts [Liz Rose Music, 2013] B+
• Numbered Doors [Liz Rose Music, 2014] **
• The Bird & the Rifle [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2016] A-
• The Tree [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2018] B+
• The Balladeer [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2020] A
• Christmas Is Right Here [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2021] A

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Bittertown [Signature Sounds, 2004]
Barely 30, she's still occasionally entranced by the magic of metaphor, and already speaking so plainly sometimes you can hardly believe it's art at all ("If You Ask," "Monday Afternoon") ***

Unglamorous [Warner Bros., 2007]
Sobriety can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially in a Nashvillian who claims in so many words she expects ecstasy. If she joked around or liked to party, it might give her country goodness the wiggle room every way of life needs. But she does like to rock, and there's no denying her eye for out-of-the-way details or her ear for a decent tune. Of several believable love songs, I'll take the full-bodied "Witness to Your Life" over the spartan title tune. Of several believable unlove songs, I recommend "Drinkin' Problem" to Al-Anon. A-

Lorraine [self-released, 2011]
McKenna's corniest album, and her strongest. Those who don't take conjugal love seriously may find it saccharine or some cornball shit like that. But there's plenty of salt in it, and the strictly literal words stay on topic--in "The Luxury of Knowing," which he has and she doesn't; "You Get a Love Song," in which a premature nuptial yields artistic dividends; "Lorraine," her mother's name and also her own; "Sweet Disposition," which her mother had and she's working on; "That's How You Know," a post-breakup song so painfully rendered it could be a post-death song as well. My favorite is the finale, which is about heaven--literally. St. Peter and Jesus get cameos. Jesus turns out to be taller than you figured. A-

Heart Shaped Bullet Hole [self-released EP, 2012]
EP proof that she too can write generic country songs--perfectly fine generic country songs ("This and the Next Life," "Sometimes He Does") *

Massachusetts [Liz Rose Music, 2013]
The statistics are pretty stark. Six songs (1-5-6-7-9-12) fairly astonishing and six (2-3-4-8-10-11) more country-generic; the same six bare and direct and guitar-colored, the others hook-cushioned and keyboard-reliant; the same six--this is the tell--credited solely to McKenna, the others all co-written. Not that the co-writes don't do Nashville's assembly-line tradition fairly proud. But comparatively they're gooey and mechanical--it's a downer when the thought-through details of "Smaller and Smaller" resolve into generalized nostalgia, when the quiet sanity of "Shouting" builds to a rousing chorus. And not only does the material no one else touched have more bite, it tracks: where 1-5 are brutal breakup songs, 7-9-12 make more of long love than Nashville generally has the brains for. So it's "You ain't worth the spit in my mouth/When I scream out your name" and "Make every word sting/Make every word bleed/Until I'm not gonna want to love you anymore" to "Every time you walk away from me you come running back/How romantic is that?" and "You whispered something in my ear last night/Some years ago you wouldn't have thought to." And then there's a happy ending: "Grown Up Now." It's about her oldest kid. B+

Numbered Doors [Liz Rose Music, 2014]
By this artist's standards, a stumble--Brandy Clark just did the cowritten best song on it better ("Three Kids No Husband," "Stranger in His Kiss," "God Never Made One of Us to Be Alone") **

The Bird & the Rifle [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2016]
McKenna fell off my radar after Warners's excellent, Tim McGraw-produced Unglamorous in 2007, and I promise it won't happen again. She's a 47-year-old mother of five from Stoughton Mass who's currently paying the bills with Little Big Town's 2015 CMA honoree "Girl Crush" and McGraw's 2016 country smash "Humble & Kind"--parental advice that sounds humbler and kinder (and wiser) (even catchier) the way McKenna understates it on her tenth album and second with serious distribution, where it's one of seven straight winners that precede three not-bad-at-alls. Even the winners could use more beat or beef--sonically I prefer the rockish Unglamorous to Dave Cobb's Chris Stapleton-certified good taste here. But production is secondary with this gal. She's a winning singer, forthright and accomplished and idiomatic, implying a slight drawl instead of faking a big one. And her writing is major verging on great. Although she's been married to the same man since she was 19, the unions she evokes so concretely and succinctly are too different to all be her own. Anyway, my very favorite chorus is advice for a single girl: "Deep down you know that you're worth more than this/Or the cost of that dinner last night/He'd be driving you home if he was worth half a shit/And his daddy had raised him up right." Whew. Only then: "But let me remind you there's real love out there down the road." A-

The Tree [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2018]
No one tills the themes of marriage, family, and the passage of time as fruitfully as McKenna. But although both the opening "A Mother Never Rests" and "The Tree" itself are so well-put it would be simple-minded to slot them as cliches, their roots in truism run so deep that their considerable portion of actual truth will probably escape nonbelievers. The sole masterstroke is "The Fixer," where a handyman fears all his ginger ale on the nightstand and keys to locks long departed will never ease his wife the fighter's . . . pain? fear? anger? depression? We don't know, and maybe he doesn't either. So be glad "You Won't Even Know I'm Gone" and "You Can't Break a Woman" on marriage and "People Get Old" and "Young and Angry Again" on the passage of time are close enough to masterstrokes themselves. B+

The Balladeer [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2020]
Without benefit of a single song as complex as "Humble and Kind" or "The Bird and the Rifle," Stoughton Mass.'s poet of Nashville's veriest verities--namely, family and the steady passage of time--assembles the most consistently top-notch album of her late-blooming career. Only the unassumingly twisty "This Town Is a Woman" and the bigamously two-timing "Two Birds" mine the modest metaphorical complexity of past stunners like "Girl Crush" and "The Bird and the Rifle." But just by returning to familiar themes like her mother's death and marriage's set-tos, she convinces you that the corny title of "When You're My Age" deserves the utopian wish it sets up: "I hope the world is kinder than it seems to be right now." A

Christmas Is Right Here [CN/Thirty Tigers, 2021]
Braver, sadder, and of course more positive than the Pistol Annies' half-sassed seasonal placemat, this would be the best album of new Christmas songs in years if it wasn't an EP, so let's just say it is anyway. Since few songwriters have extracted more detail from family life, why shouldn't McKenna generate her personal holiday catalogue? And since few are more modest, why shouldn't she dwarf the PaulMcCartney opener with five of her own? "There isn't one un'Grateful' bone in my body," she's lucky and caring enough to swear at the close. But because we've all seen death, "Even if you wouldn't change one single thing about your life/It's a matter of time, you can't make it through Christmas Without Crying." When you're stuck in Nashville in December, the family you have in Texas and Georgia might as well live at the "North Pole." And "Hail Mary" means to remind us just how hard is is for any mother to watch her son go off on his own. A

See Also

• Country Music's Most Unassuming Genius [2016-11-30]