Interstate Gospel

What makes Interstate Gospel so invigorating is hearing how Lambert, Monroe, and Presley mesh as both songwriters and singers. Their time apart has only strengthened their bond, resulting in a fully realized and resonant record that is their best to date.

The last two Pistol Annies albums ranged from very good to brilliant; this album seems to be a breakthrough, a masterpiece that extends their already formidable gifts.

["Cheyenne" is] keenly observed and beautifully realised, which goes for most everything on Interstate Gospel. [Jan 2019, p.20]

No matter how smoothly the songwriting flows, nothing’s easy on Interstate Gospel. Lambert, Monroe, and Presley know that, yet they take on an array of hard topics and reel off one-liners and hooks as if that’s enough to get us through, which it just might be.

Like a lot of great country music, the songs here are staked not on novelty but on convention, on familiar stereotypes captured in unfamiliar depth. ... As always, the premium remains on real talk, which the band dispenses with the unsparing resolve of someone who’s been listening the whole time but has not been paid attention to until now.

Unlike past efforts, where their narratives relied on a heavy dose of dark humor, the songs on Interstate Gospel convey a much more intimate personal urgency. The result, from the housewife harmony blues on “Best Years of My Life” to Lambert’s haunting post-divorce balladry on “Masterpiece,” is a sharply-rendered sketch of bruised hearts and shaken souls that amounts to the group’s most moving work to date.

There’s so little light here that the cheeky Sugar Daddy is forgivable--plus there’s a forthrightness to their exhortations to “saddle up and ride” that adds to their theme of women without time to waste.