Consumer Guide Album

Ashley McBryde: Lindeville [Warner Music Nashville, 2022]
McBryde is less featured artist than ringleader on this concept album with its pants down. Simultaneously hilarious and sad as shit, it's the made-up songs of a simple Southern town where nobody's fucking who they're supposed to and everybody but the groundskeeper who lost his thumb in Vietnam and his wife to cancer has a drug of choice, with Bud Lite and vodka-and-Sprite barely qualifying. In the opener, Brenda had better put her bra on or she'll miss seeing Marvin next door boning the babysitter, and with a few commercial breaks it's pretty much downhill from there. McBryde takes the lead a few times, but so do Caylee Hammack, Pillbox Patti, Aaron Raitiere, Benjy Davis, and to name folks previously known to me Brandy Clark and the Brothers Osborne. Inspirational Verse I: "My stepkids hate me." Inspirational Verse II: "Jesus loves the drunkards and the whores and the queers/Would you recognize him if he bought you a beer?" A