On “Been to the Mountain,” the opening track of Margo Price’s Strays, the Nashville singer-songwriter sums up her life experience: “I’ve got nothing to prove, I’ve got nothing to sell,” she declares, before going on to describe herself as “a lover, a queen and a drifter/A cowboy devil, and a bridge and boxer/A pilgrim and thief.” Price’s fourth studio album serves as a companion to her 2022 memoir, Maybe We’ll Make It, which chronicles the musician’s years of poverty and struggle to find an audience.
Strays continues in the classic rock-inspired direction of 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, breaking from the neo-traditional country music that put Price on the map. The arrangements employ slide guitar and keyboards—even xylophone on “Time Machine”—with a punchy yet spacious mix, but the album flaunts its influences a bit too transparently. “Light Me Up,” which celebrates female sexual pleasure, sounds like a Led Zeppelin outtake, with guitarist Mike Campbell doing his best Jimmy Page impression, while the melody of “Country Road” may leave you scratching your head over which Fleetwood Mac song it could have been lifted from.
Fortunately, Price continues to honor one of country music’s best traditions: telling stories about the lives of the downtrodden. “Lydia” describes a woman sitting in an abortion clinic, struggling to decide whether she wants to go through with the procedure. A violin morphs into a huge, ominous cloud of sound, mirroring Lydia’s increasing ambivalence. All the while, Price’s largely spoken-word lyrics pack a punch, with granular details like “sneakin’ a Marlboro Ultra Light I stole from a nurse out there in the alley” and “Livin’ off tips and meth/Then I came home after dancin’ one night/And I wrecked my car.”
On the album’s closer, “Landfill,” Price muses, in stark contrast to the opening track, “No one tells you when you’re young/You have so much to lose/Until you watch it slip through your hands.” Just as 2017’s All-American Made ended with its sobering title track, the final two songs on Strays close out the album on a slow, downbeat note.
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