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21. Angaleena Presley – American Middle Class


Angaleena Presley & her cute Kentucky twang has long played back seat to her Pistol Annies partner, Miranda Lambert. Lambert is a superstar while Presley has been making her bones in songwriting. But with this solo album, Presley proves that she’s in that upper echelon of women in country who write their own songs, right up there with Brandy Clark and Kacey Musgraves. American Middle Class is, well, about that. These songs have so much truth behind them, so much attention for small detail about normal lives. I loved Musgraves’ 2013 modern classic, Same Trailer Different Park, which I could say the same about, but Presley’s album is less…biting? acidic? than Musgraves’. Presley is more interested in straightforward truth. “All I Ever Wanted” is as honest a confessional as you’ll get out of Nashville these days, un-gussied with defense mechanism irony like so many [good] songs by her peers are. “Grocery Store” is a testament to small thoughts that feel big during the quotidian slog of the day. But maybe I’m overstating the seriousness of the album; Presley does use that fun-ironic distancing technique to good effect on “Pain Pills” and “Knocked Up,” whose subjects you can probably guess. This is a balanced, engaging listen all the way through. Country radio is really terrible these days and albums like this are such a vital antidote to that radio format.