Album Mắt Biếc (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2019)

Tracklist: 1. The School.flac 2. First Sight.flac 3. Smiles.flac 4. Fighting for Her.flac 5. Dreamy Eyes.flac 6. Festival.flac 7. Growing up.flac 8. Alone at School.flac 9. Missed Chances.flac 10. Almost Kissed.flac 11. Motherhood.flac 12. Like a Father.flac 13. Lives Apart.flac 14. A Familiar Place.flac 15. Rejected Daughter.flac 16. What I_ve Lost.flac 17. Wish We Were […]

Album Deeper Well by Kacey Musgraves

“My Saturn has returned,” the cosmic country singer-songwriter proclaimed to announce her fifth album (apologies to A Very Kacey Christmas), Deeper Well. If you’re reading this, odds are you know what that means: About every 30 years, the sixth planet from the sun comes back to the place in the sky where it was when you were born, and with it, ostensibly, comes growth. At 35, the chill princess of rule-breaking country/pop/what-have-you has caught up with Saturn and taken its lessons to heart. OUT: energy vampires, self-sabotaging habits, surface-level conversations. IN: jade stones, moon baths, long dinners with friends, listening closely to the whispered messages of the cosmos. (As for the wake-and-bake sessions she mentions on the title track—out, but wistfully so.) Musgraves followed her 2018 breakthrough album, the gently trippy Golden Hour, with 2021’s star-crossed, a divorce album billed as a “tragedy in three parts,” where electronic flourishes added to the drama. On Deeper Well, the songwriter’s feet are firmly planted on the ground, reflected in its warm, wooden, organic instrumentation—fingerpicked acoustic guitar, banjo, pedal steel. Here, Musgraves turns to nature for the answers to her ever-probing questions. “Heart of the Woods,” a campfire sing-along inspired by mycologist Paul Stamets and his Fantastic Fungi documentary, looks to mushroom networks beneath the forest floor for lessons on connectivity. And on “Cardinal,” a gorgeous ode to her late friend and mentor John Prine in the paisley mode of The Mamas & The Papas, potential dispatches from the beyond arrive as a bird outside her window in the morning. As Musgraves’ trust in herself and the universe deepens, so do her songwriting chops. On “Dinner With Friends,” a gratitude journal entry given the cosmic country treatment, she honors her roots in perfectly sly Musgravian fashion: “My home state of Texas, the sky there, the horses and dogs, but none of their laws.” And on the simple, searching “The Architect,” she condenses the big mysteries of human nature into one elegant, good-natured question: “Can I pray it away, am I shapeable clay/Or is this as good as it gets?”

Album Nights Like This by Kaylee Bell

Kaylee Bell has always had the sort of vocal swagger that could truly fill up a room. Her third album backs up that natural confidence with her sharpest songwriting and most wide-ranging sound to date. Decamped to Nashville with some of the city’s in-demand players, the Aotearoa New Zealand artist crafts modern country with universal appeal on the heartland rocker “Small Town Friday Nights” and the pop-driven power ballad “When Summer Rolls Around.” “Boots ’N All” is about knowing when to seize the moment, and Bell’s powerful voice fittingly rises to that occasion. Driven by a firm electronic pulse, “Life Is Tough (But So Am I)” is a club-friendly duet with young pop singer Navvy. Bell also looks back to the soundtrack of her 1990s childhood, channeling Faith Hill on “Where Were You” and earnestly reworking Alanis Morissette’s empowering 1995 hit “You Learn.” She also returns to her own songbook, ending the album with a stripped-back and emotional version of her definitive track, “Keith.”