Review: The Chicks, Gaslighter
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they say, and The Chicks put that aphorism to the test in the time leading up to Gaslighter, their fifth LP as a trio. It’s been fourteen years, several children, three divorces, and one band name change since Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer last convened in the studio to record an album together, but from the opening surge of harmonies on “Gaslighter” it’s immediately abundantly clear that the trio has lost none of its defiance, resilience or relevance. If anything, the group sounds creatively reinvigorated on Gaslighter, an emotionally rich album bursting with musicality and inventive arrangements.
Maines’s acrimonious split from actor Adrian Pasdar certainly looms large on many of Gaslighter’s best songs, including the driving title track, the fiery “Sleep at Night”, the sassy and vengeful campfire pop of “Tights on My Boat” or the elegant, pleading “Set Me Free”, a torch ballad that brings the curtain down on both the relationship and the album. It’s also that divorce that informs some of Gaslighter’s most empowering moments, like when Maines sings “I’m a little bit unraveled, but I’m ready” on “Texas Man”, or when she repeats “go it alone” over and over while joined and supported by Maguire’s and Strayer’s voices on “My Best Friend’s Wedding”, a song that harkens to the sound of Fly with two decades of added experience and wisdom.
The trio doesn’t shy away from the state of the world in 2020, notably on the album’s most explicitly political statement, the powerful and ominous “March March.” That song features pointed references to the March For Our Lives, older men’s attempts to control women’s bodies, and “what the hell happened in Helsinki”, as well as a dramatic instrumental coda that doubles as a fine showcase for the group’s undiminished instrumental prowess.
Despite Jack Antonoff’s name in the credits as co-producer, his presence on the album doesn’t signal that the trio has left behind its twangy roots. In fact, Gaslighter highlights everything that has made the Chicks’s fusion of country, folk and pop so satisfying and ingratiating since day one: Maines’s powerhouse voice, in turns fearless and vulnerable; those gorgeous, unmistakable three-part harmonies that suggest an Appalachian Fleetwood Mac; and complex, progressive arrangements where banjo, fiddle and pedal steel guitar—courtesy of Natalie’s virtuoso father Lloyd—can collide with Annie Clark’s skronky guitar riffs on “Texas Man” or bounce against a light house beat on “Julianna Calm Down” without coming across as forcedly contemporary.
When Maines sings “Just put on, put on, put on your best shoes / And strut the fuck around like you’ve got nothing to lose” on the latter, it sounds like a statement of renewed purpose for a group whose return could not have been more timely—or necessary.
Gaslighter was released July 17, 2020 on Columbia Records.
Listen to it here
