INSIDE NOISE Week of 9/8
We had a lot more Muddy Roots content to post this week, so we chose only to highlight two records from the mainstream this week. Let’s see how these two successful artists followed up on their previous work!
GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo
For the record, I did enjoy most of the first Olivia Rodrigo record in 2021, but GUTS felt like a moderate dissapointment. Rodrigo comes out of the gate relatively strong, with a couple upbeat pop tunes that show her at her most fun and engaging, but the record quickly falls off from there. There just has to be a more interesting way to frame your disappointment with your dating life than the way Rodrigo does here; we get pretty much nothing from her but the most bland storytelling that can appeal to pretty much anyone who's ever dated anyone ever. Unexpectedly, after a bit of a slog through the middle, Rodrigo comes through with by far the best song on the record at the last second, "teenage dream." As Rodrigo struggles her way through the greuling LA pop star pipeline, her struggles with age and image provide an amplified version of what every person goes through, making this experience an extremely relevant thing to write about. The slower feel of the song works surprisingly well with Rodrigo's voice, and I guess for now I'll just hope for her next record to be a bit more of a downer like this track. 4/10. -Michael
Rustin’ in the Rain by Tyler Childers
Over the past few years, alt-country darling Tyler Childers has been on a bit of a spiritual journey, releasing some commendable experiments in gospel and blues music. However, just in time for trad country's re-emergence into the mainstream, trad Tyler has returned home, giving us a much more traditional roots record in the form of Rustin' in the Rain. While he maintains a bit of this blues influence he picked up along the way, this record unquestionably shows us the greatest return to form for Childers in recent years, but that invites in some shortcomings. In 2017, Childers' style took the genre by storm, pushing the nascent alt country scene significantly closer to mainstream attention, but as the rest of the genre has started to catch up to him this new record feels a bit less exciting. Nothing we hear here brings the same rush of excitement as some of those earlier records, but maybe it doesn't need to. After spending years cultivating this movement, Childers can finally take a seat and strum out some cute love songs, getting the commercial success he deserved all along. 6/10. -Michael
