Consumer Guide Album

Lori McKenna: 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+