Ashley McBryde

• Girl Going Nowhere [Atlantic, 2018] B+
• Never Will [Warner Music Nashville, 2020] A-
• Lindeville [Warner Music Nashville, 2022] A
• The Devil I Know [Warner Music Nashville, 2023] A

Consumer Guide Reviews:

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+

Never Will [Warner Music Nashville, 2020]
Wish she'd pared down the production here: Nashville rock at its bigged-up schlockiest, with McBryde belting to match. But the songwriting is so sharp it gives her the right to belt: lyrically not one of the 11 tracks is merely passable, and McBryde has writer's credit on all but two. Of those I naturally prefer "Shut Up Sheila" and its "Why don't you and Jesus take a walk down the hallway?" to the ecologically regrettable if musically unforgettable "Styrofoam." But every compact tale engages: mayor's daughter knocked up on bootleg wine, Biblical rationale for offing your daddy's girlfriend, the neatly dubbed "One Night Standards," missing your daughter while "living the dream" on Jack-and-Coke and a sleeping pill, and there are more. A-

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

The Devil I Know [Warner Music Nashville, 2023]
McBryde's multi-artist 2022 concept album Lindeville, which for sheer playability I prefer to Tommy itself, was such a collective triumph I briefly forgot how remarkable McBryde is on her own, for instance on this year's digital Cool Little Bars EP, where every one of the five self-penned songs, all of which are also included on this album, is why I do this for a living: assuaging broken hearts in the title establishments, assuaging broken hearts in return for Kentucky bourbon at a less cool watering hole, sticking with your bad choices, living with learning to lie, the many shades of your mama's advice, hanging in there when you're one big break away. Not all of the six extras that fill out this 11-track album are quite up to their standard, although the impossible love song "Single at the Same Time" and the impossible sobriety song "6th of October" have a depth to them matched on the EP only by "Learning to Lie." Of course McBryde can sing--with impressive clarity and deliberation at that. But it's what she's singing that keeps you paying attention--even on the light-hearted ones, which are definitely there. A