On Deeper Well, Kacey Musgraves burrows into both her psyche and the sounds of folk music, making for an affecting and mellow set of songs. The album kicks off with the fingerpicked intro of “Cardinal,” an almost startling introduction given the pop-heavy sound of Musgraves’s last album, Star-Crossed, before giving way to a more contemporary acoustic-guitar passage as the singer muses about lost loved ones. It’s an intimate and effective tone-setter for the rest of the album, as many of the songs here revolve around memory and loss.
The title track establishes the thesis of Deeper Well: “I’m saying goodbye to the people/That I feel are real good at wasting my time/No regrets, baby, I just think that maybe/You go your way and I’ll go mine.” The gentle guitars and unobtrusive drumming create a soundscape that echoes the tranquility that Musgraves seems to long for. She sings of only learning to truly care for herself after turning 27, a seemingly innocuous observation that gains deeper resonance when one considers the countless talents who infamously didn’t make it past that age.
Many songs on Deeper Well portray Musgraves wrestling with a younger, more anxious, and less experienced version of herself. Tracks like “Dinner with Friends,” “Sway,” and “Too Good to Be True” serve as vignettes where she sings of the distrust that can creep into relationships or other situations when things seem too ideal and, on the former, of attempting to find solace from the world. The album’s thematic through line suggests that a sense of inner peace or self-acceptance is the ultimate destination for Musgraves, but the contradictions presented throughout highlight the impossibility of her ever truly escaping her anxieties.
But not all of the songs here are deep dives into Musgraves’s psyche. “Anime Eyes,” a tongue in cheek track that references Miyazaki Hayao, finds the singer looking at her beloved through “anime eyes.” Sonically, it features more fingerpicked guitars and faint percussion that lend it an otherworldly feel that dovetails with its lyrical focus, even if it’s a bit goofy.
By this point in the album, though, the subdued arrangements start to feel repetitive, and songs like “Moving Out,” “Jade Green,” and “Heaven Is” begin to run together. And while Musgraves’s lyrics mostly live up to the standards she’s previously set for herself, some fall flat. “Lonely Millionaire,” a lament on how all the money in the world can’t buy happiness, and “The Architect” rely too heavily on clichés to offer novel insights on the album’s central themes. “Are there blueprints and plans?/Can I speak to the architect?” she asks on the latter.
But if the album’s adamantly restrained instrumentation holds it back from ranking alongside Musgraves’s best work, it’s still a welcome shift away from the country pop of 2018’s Golden Hour. Like another former country singer turned pop star, Musgraves has both the talent and charisma to go her own way. And with Deeper Well, she seems headed in the right direction.
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