For Kacey Musgraves’ latest act, she’s putting the cowboy hat back on. ‘Middle Of Nowhere’, the Texan artist’s seventh album, unfolds like an old Western film. With Musgraves as its balladeering protagonist, it takes us on a wry, roaming journey through the highs and lows of love and womanhood – from loneliness and “dry spells” to infatuation and disappointment – before arriving at its ultimate destination: back to Musgraves herself.
Stepping back into the saddle – she literally arrived to her Coachella set on horseback last month – this version of Musgraves is the closest we’ve had to her early music in years. From the gently snarky ‘Everybody Wants To Be A Cowboy’ to the liminal dispatch from the desert, ‘Coyote’, this is the steely, stripped-down, bluegrass-inspired storytelling of ‘Same Trailer Different Park’.
A noticeable step away from the psychedelia of ‘Golden Hour’, the fatalism of ‘Star-Crossed’ and the grass-touching spirituality of ‘Deeper Well’, ‘Middle of Nowhere’ trades those albums’ expansiveness for something more pared back: steel guitar, mandolin, a relaxed drawl. Folk musician Gregory Alan Isakov provides a whimsical cameo, while bluegrass darling Billy Strings and country legends Willie Nelson and Miranda Lambert all feature. The influences of Musgraves’ beloved Nelson and longtime mentor John Prine in particular are undeniable, these meandering songs painted with brushes of poeticism and outlaw country.
As its title evokes, ‘Middle Of Nowhere’ flows with a sense of isolation, its unembellished lyrics and sparser sound creating a real feeling of standing alone in the desert. A resolute sense of solitude is the album’s central theme: not quite loneliness but a choiceful, empowered singledom. This is one of Musgraves’ most thematically cohesive records – each track a small statement on choosing yourself, rejecting the unfulfilling and charting your own course. A lovely moment on the title track captures this essence: “It’s just me and me / And that’s all I need”.
The album’s standouts are its forays into Tejano sound. ‘Back On The Wagon’, ‘Uncertain, TX’ and ‘Mexico Honey’ are transportive – dreamy pools in which Musgraves’ honeyed vocals and hazy sensibilities converge with her Texan roots in magical ways. Elsewhere, the twangy, winking ‘Dry Spell’ and camp, catty Lambert duet ‘Horses And Divorces’ are familiar flashes of Musgraves’ quintessential comic bite.
It isn’t flawless: a few tracks blur together in the middle stretch, and some lyrical moments fall flat. But the integrity and conviction behind the creative statement more than compensate. At a time of maximalism and hyperactivity in music, this grounded, assured commitment to songs that sway rather than stomp feels quietly radical. Though it’s called ‘The Middle of Nowhere’, you get the sense that Musgraves is right where she wants to be.
