A tale of two halves

Margo Price is very open about her enjoyment of psychedelic mushrooms, but this might be the first time she’s openly discussed making music in the wake of trips. Taking inspiration from such a uniquely personal experience might not translate to creating public art. However, Margo has certainly proved she’s talented enough to attempt it. On Strays, her fourth record, the translation works precisely half the time. The front half showcases everything that can go with Price’s genre-mixing. In contrast, the back half highlights how she can take those influences and create something emotionally moving and musically potent.

The album gets off to a rocky start with “Been to the Mountain,” the ultimate showcase for how taking inspiration from drugs might not click with a sober audience. Margo claims she wanted to create the feeling before going on a roller coaster. However, a looping guitar melody and incessant beeping compose the main tune. There’s no rising tension or moment of release to accomplish her intention. The song goes on as intriguing lines like “I know the scent of death like a perfume” are ruined by asinine metaphors like “I’m a hunter, I’m the hunted” and “I’ve been a victim, and I’ve been a tumor.” The only saving grace is Margo’s delivery, which gets positively unhinged. 

Any merit in the opening salvo is squandered by awkward transitions and tonal clashes. “Light Me Up” has intimate brittle acoustics leading the way, only for slabs of electric guitar to be crowbarred into the hook. Price and the music sound entirely out of sync as if they were recorded at different BPM. “Radio” has a tremendous country-soul hook with soaring backing vocals. Such beauty deserved better than a watery patter of percussion and a glitchy beat that does not flow into a chorus of pedal steel. Individual pieces work fine here, but Price could not string them together into a full song of quality.

Suddenly, Margo finds excellency halfway through the album with “Country Road,” a tribute to her late drummer Ben Eyestone. Starting with piano before slowly injecting drums and anguished pedal steel, Margo remembers the good times with Ben while lamenting all that’s changed since his passing. As she claims to witness his car going down that country road, she also envies Ben’s ignorance of the worldwide pandemic or other disasters in the last couple of years. Not a single note of its 6-minute run time is wasted as Margo sounds on the brink of tears while trying to keep her composure. Every lyric is pertinent to the narrative by either reinforcing past joys or present uncertainty. It’s easily the highlight of Strays and one of the best in her catalog.

From this point, the album evens out. Even if the quality is not quite the same level as “Country Road,” the songs are focused and effective. The tragic romance and eerie Americana of “Hell in the Heartland,” another tremendous country-soul hook proclaiming eternal devotion supported by appropriately tasteful instrumentation on “Anytime You Call” and haunting strings backing a tale of broken dreams and poverty in an opioid-ravaged America on “Lydia” hit with a command of atmosphere and tone that was sorely lacking on the first leg. The vocals, writing and music are all in top form as Margo attempts and succeeds at various styles and moods.

It is nearly unfathomable how divergent the two sides of Strays are. Given the highs and lows that powerful narcotics are capable of, Margo succeeded in her goal. The first half falters in ways that the second half achieves, making it more disappointing that it could not reach greatness all the way down.