Modern country music is thankfully seeing a renaissance, bubbling up from a groundswell with storytellers like Jamie Lin Wilson and slowly trickling into the mainstream this side of Kacey Musgraves and Little Big Town. That’s right, boys and girls, it’s all a little more than just red SOLO cups and flashy pickup trucks; country-fried Americana is seen as such because of its knack for storytelling on an intrinsic level.
In the case of Natalie Hemby, she takes an old trope in dedicating an album to a small town and making it new again, all by her own means. Her debut album, Puxico, shows as much as she attributes herself to the Missourian settlement and gives some insight on several deeper-ended thoughts attributed to multiple portions of her life, loves, and losses as she takes us on a sonic journey through its windswept streets. It’s all about memories and self-preservation, with a sweet town of 881 providing the background for a much more profound adventure than one might be expecting.