Lori McKenna has released ten albums in nearly twenty years, amassing a formidable catalog that marries forlorn country-folk melodies with vivid-story song lyrics about desperate women and dying towns. But her solo work has been lately overshadowed by the hits she has either written or co-written for other artists, including Faith Hill, Alison Krauss, and Mandy Moore. Last year she stirred up controversy when Little Big Town recorded a composition she co-wrote with Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose. Radio programmers and some listeners objected to “Girl Crush” and its intimations of gay desire, specifically to the physicality of her lyrics (“I want to taste her lips, because they taste like you”). Despite the hubbub, it won a Grammy for Country Song of the Year. This past spring Tim McGraw took McKenna’s “Humble & Kind” to the top of the country singles chart—the first time in four years that a song with only one writer reached that spot.
The songs on her latest album don’t veer too far from anything she has done before, but The Bird & the Rifle may do for McKenna, career-wise, what Traveller did for veteran songwriter Chris Stapleton last year. McKenna has a remarkable facility for conveying the inner lives of women trapped in soured relationships; that may not be an easy sell for the conservative playlists of country radio, but it makes for one of the most accomplished and devastating singer-songwriter albums of the year. McKenna even worked with producer Dave Cobb, who helmed Traveller. As he’s done with so many artists from Jason Isbell to Sturgill Simpson to literally anybody on his recent Southern Family compilation, he gives the music a lived-in quality, emphasizing an amiable acoustic strum, a relaxed backing band, and the ragged texture of McKenna’s voice.
The drama in her songs has the easy feel of the everyday; nothing much happens beyond her characters pondering where things might have gone wrong. “Wreck You” opens with a disarming couplet: “I get dressed in the dark each day/You used to think that was so sweet.” The language is simple and direct, but that phrase “used to” hangs in the air, suggesting several years of quiet sacrifices and well-worn routines that have frayed the edges of this relationship. The narrator dreams of disentangling herself from this late sleeper, and the Mellotron strings on the coda—a Cobb signature—soundtrack a daydream that may never come true.
Even with its references to teenagers blasting Nirvana while racing down suburban backroads, “We Were Cool” isn’t about generational nostalgia but something more personal, and the last verse throws a twist into the story, with McKenna going full Springsteen: “Duran Duran on the radio, those wild boys would never know we had a baby on the way the year our friends started school.” It’s an understated reveal, but something about the melody makes the sentiment sound bittersweet instead of just plain bitter. McKenna knows that the power of a barbed lyric or a rich character relies on a bold melody and a patient vocal, and more than anything else her vocals put these songs across and makes these stories relatable. On “Always Want You,” the break in her voice implies intense yearning even as the lyrics hedge their bets. The most important words in the chorus are the first two: “I think I’ll always want you.”
McKenna doesn’t cover “Girl Crush,” but she does include her own version of “Humble & Kind.” It sounds like it ought to be a Hallmark card of a song, with a parent passing life lessons along to her children, but what could easily have been platitudes turn out to be bits of hard-won wisdom. “Know the difference between sleeping with someone and sleeping with someone you love,” McKenna cautions, “‘I love you’ ain’t no pick-up lines.” When she gets around to that chorus, to that loving reminder to rise above your basest fears and to “always stay humble and kind,” it’s a startlingly powerful moment, especially at a time when such virtues of humility and compassion seem to be in such tragically short supply.
