At this point, I would be a fool to try to convince you that I went into the fifth Kacey Musgraves album, Deeper Well, with anything but the highest expectations. Over the last decade, very few country artists have managed to deliver such expansive ‘albums’ in a genre that seems to rely so heavily on singles to sustain itself. Debut Same Trailer, Different Park changed the face of Modern Country; Pageant Material felt like an unearthed classic of the genre; Golden Hour proved that Kacey Musgraves was one of the songwriters of her generation and Star Crossed defied expectations by exploring genres further afield.
In a way, Deeper Well fails to live up to the high peaks of all four of these albums, but head a little deeper and you find a record that continues her winning streak of redefining her sound.
For a starter, this is the most stripped back and ‘simple’ record of Kacey’s career, instrumentation is often a hint of steel guitar here, a steady rhythm section there, an occasional harmonised backing vocal too; it’s intentionally less expansive and busy than much of her last two records. Some may see this as a return to the sound of her very country debut, but it’s not that either.
A standout moment like ‘Giver / Taker’ teases you into thinking it’s a simple acoustic track, but it has buried itself as an impossible to resist earworm in the last few weeks of listening. Kacey has so much confidence in her delicate vocals on songs like this and ‘Sway’ that flirts with vocoder alongside raw picked guitars, there’s no way a pre Golden Hour Kacey Musgraves could sound as effortless as this.
This isn’t a love album, it’s not a divorce album either, so there’s a sense of freedom from Kacey lyrically on songs like ‘Cardinal’, ‘Dinner with Friends’ or ‘The Architect’ to dive into herself and the constant shifts in relationships with a partner and with friends too. It’s ‘Too Good to be True’ which shines the most though, up there with the likes of ‘Space Cowboy’ and ‘Happy & Sad’ in terms of her lyrical best. ‘Please don’t make me regret opening up that part of myself that I’ve been scared to give again’. If this album is a return to anything it’s to the plainly spoken inner turmoil that she so perfectly crafted on Golden Hour.
There’s no weak moments, but at a push I’d be looking at tracks like ‘Heart of the Woods’ and ‘Heaven Is’ that don’t truly reach the same heights as the groove of ‘Lonely Millionaire’ or the soaring ‘Jade Green’. The highs are certainly lower than the true highs of other Kacey Musgraves projects, something that made my first few listens a little more muted than I had wanted. Sticking with Deeper Well though is the best advice I can give as I’ve found so much more layered emotion and exciting musicality throughout the album.
It can often take a minute for the true magic of Kacey Musgraves’ records to flourish with a listener, I certainly remember not feeling the way I do now about ‘Slow Burn’ on first listen, and Deeper Well is no different. A step along the journey we’ve been on for over a decade now with a once in a generation artist. My experience with Deeper Well is only getting deeper by the day.
Words by Sam Atkins
Picky Bastards 
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