Before Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell first got together, he posted on social media a photo he had taken of her leaning over in a low-cut dress, with a caption along the lines of “Thanks for this.” She looked like she was smiling, and it seemed like a moment of levity in the days when they would playfully tease each other, but it also wasn’t really fair: the snapshot showed more than Shires probably would have preferred, and she didn’t have any say in how it portrayed her. Isbell eventually deleted the post, but the dynamic in the former couple’s divorce has felt similar. So far, he’s been the one in charge of the narrative, in interviews and obliquely on this year’s LP Foxes in the Snow, in a way that has minimized Shires’ contributions to his career and implied that she was wearing down his commitment to sobriety. She wrenches back control of her own story on Nobody’s Girl.
It’s a collection of thirteen lacerating tracks as she struggles to make sense of the end of her 11-year marriage. She’s angry at times, of course, but anger is just one part of a complicated mix of emotions that leans more toward hurt, bewilderment, and even defiance. Though Shires has her say on Nobody’s Girl, she’s not settling scores, or going on the attack. Though her ex shows up in these songs, this is an album about Shires, and she plumbs the despair that she felt, the weariness and self-doubt, and ultimately the strength and determination to rebuild her life on her own terms. Shires would be the first to tell you that none of it has been easy, and these songs reflect the arduous process of “vining my way back up,” as she puts it on “A Way It Goes,” a song that feels perpetually on the edge of tears as it floats on drifting clouds of strings, minor-key piano, and a restrained beat.
Shires teams again here with Lawrence Rothman, who produced her 2022 album Take It Like a Man (she also played on Rothman’s criminally underrated 2024 album The Plow That Broke the Plains). Together, they dial in a cohesive musical approach that complements the unflinching lyrics: somber piano carries many of these songs, augmented by acoustic guitar, subtle synths, steel guitar and Shires on fiddle. Even the outlier musical arrangements—the loud, snarling guitars on “Piece of Mind,” or the fast-flowing rhythm that drives “Strange Dreams”—exist in service of her voice, which is the focal point here. That’s as it should be: Shires has always been an expressive singer with a quaver that can make you swallow hard. It has never been more effective than it is on Nobody’s Girl. She sounds sad and exhausted on “Maybe I,” her voice small and contained at first, then stronger and more certain, over a simple repeating piano part and swells of steel guitar. By contrast, there’s an undercurrent of fury in how she sings “A Piece of Mind.” Shires toggles between resentment and devastation at being left to pick through the wreckage of her marriage, and slowly coming to accept that the relationship had ended while erasing what traces of it she could.
Though Shires isn’t out to take cheap shots on Nobody’s Girl, she makes clear on “The Details” that she also won’t let herself be erased from her own life. It’s the most pointed song on the album, though there’s at least as much sorrow as anger in Shires’ recap of her marriage and its dissolution. “Holding your hand, touring vans, / All I got is a wedding band / In a dresser drawer, what was it all for / Putting your dreams over mine,” she sings over mournful piano chords. Through the haze of pain and heartache that she’s processing on Nobody’s Girl, those lines imply an epilogue that underpins these songs. Though Shires never wanted to find herself “standing in the aftermath of a life you thought would last forever,” as she writes in press notes, her dreams are now her own. Maybe that’s scant comfort at times, but maybe it’s a promising new start.
Eric R. Danton has been contributing to Paste since 2013. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Pitchfork, among other publications. He writes Freak Scene, a newsletter about music in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut.
