New Album Review: Lori McKenna- 1988

Lori McKenna- 1988

Label: CN

Producer: Dave Cobb

Over the better part of two fabulous decades, Lori McKenna has unequivocally emerged as one of the true lyrical voices of a generation. She is the quintessential voice of the common woman, and also capable of making those ladies’ husbands of stones crumble into a pile of tears with her bitterly beautiful tales of every-day domestic life. On her newest album, McKenna’s pen is as gracefully rich and literate as it’s ever been, while the production, once again helmed by Americana heavyweight Dave Cobb, parlays a more jangly and electric rock-tinged sound that compliments her hearty voice as much as the commonly acoustic trappings of past records. Named for the year that she married her husband Gene, 1988—both the track and the album as a whole– is very much another love letter to the domestic adventures she’s lived with Gene and the five children they’ve raised. The song itself is a central celebration of the unifying love of their family, while the surrounding tracks find McKenna again tackling the intimate realism of the highs and lows that happen in between, day in and day out. The give and take struggles of a successful marriage are tackled in tracks like the sardonic “Days Are Honey” and the surging “Killing Me”. The crippling weight and exhausting pace of modern society’s expectations is set to music in “Letting People Down”. The passage of time and appreciation of what it contained is gracefully captured, as only McKenna can on cuts like “Growing Up” and “The Old Woman In Me”. And the reward and gratitude felt by watching children grow into successful adults glowingly takes center stage in “Happy Children”. And in between all of the familial tales, McKenna once again reminds us of what a voice she is for common man humanity and all that it faces, this time on a stunner like the opioid addiction-battered “Wonder Drug”. The stark final verse of that track is as startlingly powerful and real as anything she’s ever penned: “I wasn’t paying attention when the roof was steady, the walls came in/Blue-collar life and all its weight/I was right there and I was too late…I was too late…”  This is the work of one of our time’s true musical poets; appreciate it and soak up every piece of its life-affirming wisdom and sustenance.

Track Listing:

1. “The Old Woman In Me” (Lori McKenna)
2. “Happy Children” (L. McKenna, Chris McKenna)
3. “Killing Me” featuring Hilary Lindsey (McKenna, Hilary Lindsey, Luke Laird)
4. “Days Are Honey” (L. McKenna, Laird, Barry Dean)
5. “1988” (L. McKenna, Brian McKenna)
6. “Growing Up” (L. McKenna)
7. “Wonder Drug” (L. McKenna)
8. “The Town In Your Heart” (L. McKenna, Jessie Jo Dillon, Dustin Christensen)
9. “Letting People Down” (L. McKenna)
10. “The Tunnel” (L. McKenna, Ben West, Stephen Wilson Jr.)