Margo Price
"All American Made"
(Third Man (ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK){)
Country singer Margo Price paid her dues for the better part of a decade in Nashville before breaking through with last year's soul-searching "Midwest Farmer's Daughter," recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis for Jack White's Third Man label. "All American Made" builds on and broadens out from that success. There's throwback honky tonk, to be sure, like the boot-scooting admission of vulnerability "Weakness" and feminist celebration of resiliency "Wild Women." But Price also expands her musical palette and takes on real-world issues. She puts her excellent road band to use as she dishes out old-school soul on "A Little Pain," and dabbles in Tex-Mex on "Pay Gap," which addresses unequal compensation in the workplace for men and women. "Why don't you do the math?" she asks. "You're ripping my dollars in half." Economic inequality is also addressed in a well-matched duet with Willie Nelson on "Learning to Lose," and the title cut sings out in search of healing solutions, closing out with words from (of all people) Richard Nixon's first inaugural address as it argues "the simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us." _ Dan DeLuca
