Kacey Musgraves: ‘Golden Hour’ Review
8.5
GENRE: Country/Pop
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2018Kacey Musgraves is a self-paced storyteller. She loves taking her time to unpack her stories, giving you tiny hints of where the plot it’s going, crooning her way into your ears with the grace of a shy to-be girl-next-to-door. That’s truer than ever on her fourth record, Golden Hour. She spends the album luring you into a forty-six-minute-long love story that you can’t seem to put down. Her slinky, winsome vocals are those of a woman who outgrew her small town in Texas and, to some extent, country music conventions. “I’m gonna do it my way, it’ll be alright,” she sings on the opener “Slow Burn,” a song she confessed to having written while on acid—a shocking admission for a country artist. Musgraves has always been a black-sheep in the genre, advocating for people with slyly progressive songwriting since her 2013’s breakthrough single, “Follow Your Arrow.” On Golden Hour, the singer sought to stretch the boundaries a bit further, switching up beats and playing with different guitars, making sure the album is traditional enough to compel staunch country fans while glazing the sound with glowing pop and disco influences.
As the old aphorisms go, to be in love is to be ignorant, and ignorance is bliss. Golden Hour is mapped by the eyes of someone who’s so madly in love that they see everything glistening. Oftentimes, that happens when, you know, a singer meets the perfect muse; singer and new person get married, singer sings about them, singer sings for them, singer sings with them, singer talks about them in interviews—you get the gist. In Musgraves’ case, she wed another artist: Ruston Kelly, a fellow country singer. Kelly has no co-writing credits on Golden Hour, but Musgraves has revealed that the album is entirely about him. This amatory, dreamy perspective results in prismatic tracks that go by so smoothly that you don’t even notice forty-six minutes have passed—forty-six minutes of unavoidable ear-lending. Musgraves’ voice charms you into believing that she’s the best thing to listen to at the moment—never mind the surrounding voices in your office or the tv blasting in your living room.
On Golden Hour, every layer, every nuanced sound is a brick on a wall inside Musgraves’ head. From the random statements shot in the second verse of “Slow Burn” to the outpouring of conflicting emotions on “Lonely Weekend,” it feels like the dialogues come from the inquietude one feels when happy. Most of them happen in her consciousness, like the kind of revelations you have while… high. Musgraves opens the record with two songs about being okay with the slow development of a new relationship. Her reveries only materialize on “Butterflies,” a song so romantic that it would melt even the most skeptical. “I was just coastin’, never really goin’ anywhere,” she starts with that lovely twang of hers. From the downbeat in the first second of the song to the infectious piano and banjo chords, it’s a bit cloying (“you give me butterflies”) but irresistible.
Golden Hour glides through country music without letting go of its omnipresent pop aspirations. Musgraves gives an innovative approach to her original genre, but the disruption is concealed, at times peaking through cracks on the borderline cloying romanticism of Golden Hour. The tiny acts of defiance against the idea of what country music should sound like are better developed on her 2021’s tragic, poppier album star-crossed, but they can be found on Golden Hour in smaller portions: the vocoder effect on the vocals of “Oh, What a World” and “Space Cowboy,” the and pulsating disco beats of “High Horse,” the synth-pop shimmer of “Velvet Elvis.” These are enough to distinguish Musgraves within the country genre and attract people who otherwise wouldn’t listen to a country album.
Not much time passed between Musgraves’ sophomore album, Pageant Material, and its Grammy-Award-winning follow-up Golden Hour. But by the time the album came out in 2018, the market was already in a crescent demand of new songs at light speed, new artists surging from every corner of the internet, TikTok’s influence on the charts giving its first baby steps. But Golden Hour is unlike anything that came out that year: hopeful and direct songwriting, clear concept and tone, highly sticky glossy melodies, soothing arrangements, and Musgraves’ voice… her sweet, soothing voice. Golden Hour is such a successful collection of beautiful things that all songs have the potential to become a new favorite every time you listen to the album.
Listen to Golden Hour:
