The Blade
Ashley Monroe is a country singer with a peripatetic career: She has worked with Jack White in the Raconteurs, with Wanda Jackson, and belongs to the trio Pistol Annies with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley. She follows up her strong 2013 comeback LP Like a Rose with another collection of songs that hint at pop but remain rooted in classic country traditions.
The first cut on Ashley Monroe’s The Blade is far from its deepest: The poppy opener “On To Something Good” serves as a fleeting note of tentative optimism for everything that follows to reverberate out and away from. The majority of Monroe’s superb third album hunkers down with heartache and struggle.
Ashley Monroe has, for the most part, been relegated to something of a support role in her career. The Tennessee native has…
The title The Blade suggests a certain flintiness from Ashley Monroe and while there's little question she's tough, she wraps that steeliness underneath a smooth surface -- a feint that means her songs sigh as often as they slight, sometimes revealing their intent only after they've wormed their way into the subconscious.