Gaslighter

By blending early-21st-century pop savvy with the storytelling that made country music so crucial to the American canon, Gaslighter is all fire and nerve, performed by three women whose musical bona fides are rivaled only by their rock-solid backbones.

Rather than impose an excess of ear candy (although it’s welcome on the few occasions in which it comes), Antonoff knew what he had on his hands here: an album in which each new incendiary lyrical moment seems to top the last, before grievance gives way to beautiful grief. Candor, take them away.

The management of tone throughout is also masterful and consistent. For all the shifting that occurs within individual songs, it’s always anchored to place by restrained instrumentation and artful, deliberate counterpoints between highs and lows.

Gaslighter is bold and incendiary, finding the Chicks reclaiming their relevance. Thankfully, the Chicks rejected silencing as Gaslighter reestablishes their penchant for vocalizing raw truths.

An album so full of emotion, it takes a while to absorb it all. It’s not perfect, and it’s not meant to be. But the juxtaposition of slickness and rawness somehow works, making the kind of statement the Chicks have been working toward since they first sang of mattress dancing and offing that unfaithful Earl.

Gaslighter is the best country album of 2020 because it forces empathy onto the listener while reminding us we don’t have to be superheroes to make a difference.

Dig deep, stick to your guns, “be a lot less guarded”, runs the message of this nourishing dose of laser-sharp country-pop boosterism.

From bow to stern The Chicks take us on a musical boat ride, with infectious top lines you’ll be humming long after the album has ended – just make sure you don’t leave your tights.

Their most piercing and autobiographical yet. [Sep 2020, p.82]

While these songs are spare and direct enough to withstand simpler instrumentation, the arrangements the Chicks worked up with Antonoff are subtle and sly; they wrap themselves around the bones of the melody, accentuating the emotions underpinning the songs.

Rather than the sound of three middle-aged musicians straining to recapture their relevance, Gaslighter is pertinent on its own terms, more proof that the under-told stories of women make the perfect raw material for punchy, compelling and bracingly contemporary pop.

A straight-talking delight, ‘Gaslighter’ refuses to radically overhaul The Chicks’ sound, and that’s ultimately why it’s so successful. Retaining that fine balance between country and pop, it allows the three-piece space to be true to themselves, ably building on their storied catalogue.

Gaslighter is not a reinvention for the trio by any means. Still political, still resilient – if you were a fan of The Dixie Chicks back in 2006, then The Chicks are precisely who you hoped they would grow to be in 2020.

“Gaslighter” turns out to be the Chicks’ most intensely personal effort yet, with song after song apparently inspired by Maines’ 2019 divorce.

The Chicks have always had strong backbones, and Gaslighter shows that their conviction hasn't faded in their time away – if anything, they've only become more indignant, more willing to explore, more ready to speak. It's an inspiring, swift-footed return.

By incorporating country signifiers into what is otherwise a terrific, of-the-moment pop album, Antonoff and the Chicks could have come up with a style that’s even more progressive, akin to the production on Kacey Musgraves’s Golden Hour. If nothing else, that highlights how the Chicks still have room to grow, either with or without Antonoff, as they move into this new phase of their career. Gaslighter may not have been the album that country music needed, but it’s clearly the one that the Chicks needed to make.

This is certainly the poppiest the band has ever sounded, and the album has a handful of trite or overly-cheesy moments, but these are easy to overlook when it all sounds this good, and when so many of Maines’ lyrics are this precise and honest.

Much of the album charms. What’s missing, despite a team that includes some of pop’s most sought-after collaborators, are memorable songs that stand up to the sky-high bar the Chicks set for themselves all those years ago. Without a clear target, their formerly devastating blows just don’t quite land the same way.

The 12 tracks on Gaslighter fall into easy, radio-friendly categories: empowerment anthem, cheeky ukulele kiss-off, minimalist protest song. Coupled with a long-overdue drop of the “Dixie” from their name, the arrangement dissolves most of the group’s lingering connections to their street-corner bluegrass origins.