Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

After a sprightly Christmas record, a project reminiscent of a retro country wedding and a creatively charged acid trip, singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves’ fourth album, Golden Hour, feels like she’s the first person to observe the world, and the listener is the first person she’s telling all this to. Throughout the record, the East Texas artist is awestruck and radiant, her lyricism sprawling, spilling and gushing, much like the infinite hues which the record is named after. The result of this is that the record is her most approachable, serving as a comforting gateway for the average country music cynic. 

Throughout 13 songs, all ranging between 1 to 5 minutes each, Musgraves stirs together her country and pop instincts, spanning from sombre piano-solo Mother to full-on country rodeo show-down High Horse. Yet, the album is enticingly smooth, both sonically and lyrically. In the track Wonder Woman, she confronts her partner about unrealistic expectations, stating “All I need’s a place to land.” She finds this place as the album progresses. 

Musgraves was not keen on sticking to the usual country fare of gun-slinging, trucks and booze, signalling an artist not bent on iconoclasm so much as firmly pushing the boundaries modern country has set for itself. The lyrics are more focused on universal themes, while still maintaining that country charm, particularly when writing about love. She sings on Velvet Elvis: “I wanna show you off every evening, go out with you in powder blue and tease my hair up high.” The music itself also draws from a range of genres, including classic rock, and surprisingly, hazy psychedelia coupled with disco-house not a far cry from Daft Punk’s works. Musgraves’ experimentation works to an impressive effect on the drowsy track Oh What A World, harnessing unconventional tools like vocoders and voice harmonisers.  

  The sharp observations in Musgrave’s earlier works seem to have mellowed in this project, there’s something more intricate at play here. “Is there a word for the way I’m feeling tonight,” she laments in Happy & Sad, trying to determine what the melancholy we all feel at the highs in our lives is. The entire album is a 45-minute ode to not finding the right words, and being overcome by your flood of emotions, surrendering rather than resisting. 

The tones of the songs melt seamlessly between odes to romantic partners- as seen in Velvet Elvis and the self-explanatory Butterflies- and wistful elegies when the rose-tinted views fade- shown in the sepia hues of Lonely Weekend. The strategic sequencing of the album’s tracks makes the disparity of themes nearly indistinguishable.

Quite contrary to the soft, warm hues of the album cover, the album does have a palpable undercurrent of sadness. Particularly, the song Mother strikes a chord in regards to the country tradition of songs about mothers- or the lack thereof. Musgraves laments, “I’m just sitting here thinking about the time that's slipping, and missing my mother.’ The song was allegedly inspired by a drug-charged epiphany Musgraves’ experienced when her mother sent her a picture of her hands, which the song also describes: “Bursting with empathy, I’m feeling everything.” 

With Golden Hour, Musgraves has made her mark in the country scene, unorthodox as she is, Rolling Stone Magazine even placing this magnum opus on the 270th spot of their 2020 edition of 500 greatest albums of all time. Through the record, listeners are led through the various ups and downs of Musgraves’ life, gently so that even the avid country cynic can’t help but be enchanted too.