In retrospect, it was inevitable that Ashley Monroe would re-record "Has Anybody Ever Told You?" The song has been in her repertoire for nearly a decade, and has long been her signature tune. She first recorded it back in the late '00s, when she was an upstart from Knoxville and when Nashville had even less time for young female singer-songwriters than it does now. Monroe had signed to Sony, which in a no-faith vote had released her debut, 2009's Satisfied, digitally instead of physically. Soon, she would be on her own again.
Many artists might have simply disappeared, but Monroe simply switched her career GPS to take her down less-traveled industry routes: performing on the Ten Out of Tenn tour in 2009 (which featured ten emerging singer-songwriters from the Volunteer State), recording an EP with Trent Dabbs, working with Jack White on a Raconteurs single and a Wanda Jackson album, and forming a supergroup called the Pistol Annies with friends Angaleena Presley and Miranda Lambert. So, by the time she re-signed with a major, Monroe had re-established herself as a cult commodity in Nashville, and her ascendency looked certain. In 2013, she released what amounts to a comeback, Like a Rose, one of the best country albums of this decade.
The history of "Has Anybody Ever Told You?" also shows how Monroe's conception of country music has remained constant throughout all the professional twists and turns. Her original was spare and direct, with as few instruments as possible to get the point across, but the version on her new album The Blade is fuller and denser. It sounds made by someone with many more resources at her disposal, yet it retains its stateliness, its essential intimacy. Even with more musicians involved, Monroe makes the song sound like a whispered exchange between the listener and herself—less a profession of desire than a reassuring embrace.
The old song fits perfectly on the new album, which is less about the vagaries of relationships than the trauma of their aftermath. As such, it may not have the immediacy of Like a Rose, which was all about finding and asserting your identity both professionally and personally. Yet The Blade has its own specific character, its own set of concerns, even if it does take Monroe a few songs to settle into the album. Opener "On to Something Good" is a statement of unflinching optimism by an artist who might have succumbed to bitterness ages ago. The title track hinges on a devastating break-up metaphor: "You caught it by the handle, and I caught it by the blade." Rather than belt that line, Monroe wisely dials it back, sounding like she is already getting on with living with the hurt.
The theme of The Blade isn't the wound, but the salve. As such, some listeners new to country music—enticed by the success of recent efforts by Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark, and Presley—might write off songs like "Weight of the Load" and "From Time to Time" as platitudes, the kind you might find on sympathy cards. Country, however, does these sentiments better than most genres, and the best country makes extroversion sound compassionate and humane. When Monroe is singing about her own travails, as she does on the upbeat "Winning Streak" (which is actually about losing) or the satisfyingly dark "Dixie", she manages to convey a very specific and detailed perspective, to suggest a very real human being within the song.
Like so many country albums, especially recent ones by Monroe's friend and bandmate Miranda Lambert, The Blade could be stronger if it was more streamlined and sequenced with some kind of overarching narrative in mind, but that's almost beside the point when the album sounds so damn good. Once again Monroe worked with Vince Gill and veteran engineer Justin Niebank, and together they hint at pop directions while never abandoning classic country traditions. This is country music for headphones, intricate and inventive and endlessly detailed. A looped beat opens "From Time to Time" with a rigid meter, but it loosens up gradually until it recalls something recorded decades ago at Muscle Shoals. On "Winning Streak" Monroe is joined by what sounds like the ghosts of the Ray Conniff Singers, egging her on toward disaster. And perhaps that's the secret to Monroe's longevity in a cutthroat business where radio rules and women are dismissed as "tomatoes": Digging in its past, she still finds sneaky ways to point towards country's future.
