Album Review: Lydia Loveless- Nothing's Gonna Stand In My Way Again

 

My first experience with Lydia Loveless was 2016s Real. Real is probably a good halfway point in her career to date

Prior to that, her songs have titles like “Steve Earle”, “Chris Isaak”, “ Head” “ Boy Crazy” and covered Kesha and Prince and wrote a song about Jeffrey Dahmer. 

There of course is no either/or or better/worse in art. But listening to 2020s Daughter or 2023s Nothing’s Gonna Stand in my Way Again tends to take me down a road of those critic cliches like “‘maturing songwriter”. 

It’s a term we reserve for the Dylan’s and Lennon’s because they are the all time greats. Most musical acts seem to max out at two albums. But it’s this kind of criticspeak that I can’t help but thinking with Loveless. 

There’s still the rebellious musician of those early days but it’s been honed into sharp songwriter material in the way rowdy rockers like Earle and Paul Westerberg did. 

Which makes this an album an interesting one to ponder. It sounds so clean that it is easy to imagine it playing on the radio somewhere. 

Of course, where is another story. While it would easily fit in a set between say Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell, it’s not like there are that many stations around that exist. 

Indeed, even in this new Stapleton/ Zach Bryan/Speak Now (Taylor’s version) country radio environment, there is, to be frank, a mathematically slim percentage of female voices on country radio. 

Which I suppose solves the “what do I do now my favorite cult artist is popular” conundrum, but in no uncertain terms, is clearly a bummer. 

There’s certainly nothing wrong with Loveless’s production that would keep it off air. 

“Nothing..” is probably as good as an Americana album as one can get, and we do live on a post-radio environment, so people will find this album.  The album’s singles  like “Toothache” rock so hard that Tom Petty comparisons keep bouncing up. Unfortunately, modern radio wouldn’t likely find a spot for Tom these days either, so we are back to “word of mouth” and I am telling you now to go listen.