Margo Price – That’s How Rumors Get Started (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Margo Price – That’s How Rumors Get Started (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 35:42 minutes | 480 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Loma Vista Recordings

“That’s How Rumors Get Started” sees Nashville icon Margo Price commit her genre-bending rock-and-roll show to record for the first time, stretching out her emotive twang over sky-high soft-rock, burning psychedelic rock ballads, stomping road songs, and sprinkles of pop. With production from her friend and longtime collaborator Sturgill Simpson, it shows both of them pushing into unexpected directions.

Lots of Nashville songwriters rely on characters like those drifting through Margo Price’s That’s How Rumors Get Started. There’s the delusional lover who sabotages his one steady relationship without even trying; the road dog who begins to see travel, once liberating, as a prison sentence; the couple locked in a dance of dysfunction they can’t understand, summed up in couplets like “You were the footsteps, I was the floor.”

When Price tells their stories, what begins as cardboard-cutout generic is transformed into a disquieting, vivid, and sometimes messy experience. The people in songs like “Letting Me Down” and the title track sure do start out as “types,” but as Price follows their everyday conflicts and responses to circumstance, nuances appear. Their profiles deepen. With this, her third full-length effort, she’s refined a communication style that drops listeners beyond the narrative twists, to the yearnings below the meanings and the subtexts below that.

Produced by Sturgill Simpson and featuring sparkling contributions from keyboardist Benmont Tench and drummer James Gadson, That’s How Rumors Get Started is a marvel of writerly precision set against impulsive flailing and of steely craft blasted with headstrong vibe. The musical support is apt, tuned to the faint twinges of bitterness in the lyrics. Furthermore, the much-discussed pivot toward rock and roll is deftly executed—there are echoes of Tom Petty in the backbeats, glances in the direction of mid-’70s Eagles balladry, and even the twitchy ’80s hits of Huey Lewis. Price uses those as touchstones, not templates; she could interpret these songs as country weepers or polkas and they’d retain their depth and resonance. That’s one measure of a great song. There are a bunch of them here. – Tom Moon

Tracklist:
1. Margo Price – That’s How Rumors Get Started (04:10)
2. Margo Price – Letting Me Down (03:14)
3. Margo Price – Twinkle Twinkle (03:31)
4. Margo Price – Stone Me (03:09)
5. Margo Price – Hey Child (03:49)
6. Margo Price – Heartless Mind (02:50)
7. Margo Price – What Happened To Our Love? (03:35)
8. Margo Price – Gone To Stay (03:01)
9. Margo Price – Prisoner Of The Highway (03:44)
10. Margo Price – I’d Die For You (04:35)

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