White Noise/White Lines

Kelsey Waldon works in the country, folk, and bluegrass songwriting tradition of depicting rural life—but has zero interest in romanticizing or simplifying her subject matter. On her third full-length—and first for John Prine’s Oh Boy Records—the Nashville singer conjures the rustic places and resourceful people of her upbringing in all their complexity. “Kentucky, 1988” and “Black Patch” are tales of stubborn self-reliance—one autobiographical, the other historical. In the title track, “Anyhow,” and “Lived and Let Go,” she locates enlightenment in plainspoken country wisdom, and in “Sunday’s Children,” she draws a connection between many kinds of people dwelling at the social margins. The album’s sinewy, down-home, occasionally rocking folk-country arrangements revolve around the vinegary stoicism of Waldon’s singing and the plaintive potency of Brett Resnick’s steel guitar playing.

Kelsey Waldon made her leap into the big leagues with White Noise/White Lines, an album released on John Prine's Oh Boy Records.

Kelsey Waldon, a native of Monkey's Eyebrow, Kentucky, is poised to be recognized among the finest country singers of her generation. Having...