"Before the end of her marriage to alt-country darling Jason Isbell became a reality in December 2023, singer-songwriter and The Highwomen member Amanda Shires imagined its possibility on "Fault Line," from her 2022 album Take It Like a Man. Despondently etching out a rough patch the modern-day Johnny and June had endured, Shires sang as though underwater. As she envisioned how to answer the inevitable questions she'd get about their split, her voice slumped with exhaustion: "I'll say what's true/I don't know.""
"she remains mostly uninterested in tidy stories about what happened. The album sounds as though she's still down among the debris of her marriage, rather than circling overhead surveying the damage. Shires picks through the wreckage by hand: there's the serrated edge of abandonment, the brittle filament of betrayal, and the suffocating fog of loss. What's left to salvage, it turns out, is herself."
"Opener "Invocation" is a saging ritual. Shires' fiddle is the mouthpiece here, her bow dragging against the strings so they groan. But she's not alone in that pain-a piano balms the burn and together, they offer it all up for release. Partnering again with producer Lawrence Rothman, they strip away the bluesy folk-rock used to ground her fluttering vibrato on Take It Like a Man. This time, they reach for softer styles to cradle her grief."
Amanda Shires confronts divorce on Nobody's Girl, her eighth album and first since Jason Isbell filed nearly two years earlier. She resists tidy explanations and stays immersed in the debris of a dissolved marriage. Songs pick through abandonment, betrayal, and loss, ultimately centering on reclaiming herself. Opener "Invocation" functions as a saging ritual, with Shires' fiddle groaning and piano offering balm. Producer Lawrence Rothman and Shires move away from bluesy folk-rock toward softer arrangements. Piano and lush strings cradle grief while fragile vocals rise and fall, mapping exhaustion, shattering, and tentative resilience across the record.
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