With 2022's immediately iconic
Lady for Sale
,
Lola Kirke
completes her transformation from buzzed-about film and TV darling to charismatic country-pop chanteuse. The album follows her engaging 2018 debut,
Heart Head West
, which showcased her dusky and noirish singer/songwriter brand of indie country-rock. Working with instrumentalist/producer
Austin Jenkins
(
White Denim
Leon Bridges
),
Kirke
raises the bar on
, crafting empowered, retro-leaning songs that feel like the kind of polished country-pop artists like
Dolly Parton
and
Juice Newton
excelled at in the 1980s. Imagine a soundtrack to a film that somehow combines the saucy feminist swagger of
9 to 5
with the "can-do" business skirt and running shoes attitude of
Working Girl
, and you'll get a sense of the clever, spirited vibe
conjures on
. Tracks like "If I Win" and "Pink Sky" are catchy anthems that frame her warm, whisky-and-lollipop voice with hyper-colored synths, twangy electric guitars, and a mix of real and analog percussion. Elsewhere, cuts like "Stay Drunk" and "Fall in Love Again" evoke the shimmering, dancing-in-the-sunset style of
Fleetwood Mac
. While
sounds like Nashville in the '80s,
is no tumbleweed. She's a city girl (born in London and raised in New York) and brings a wry, knowing maturity to the album that feels both genuine and artfully conceptual. She has an uncanny knack for tweaking country tropes with a postmodern pop sensibility, as on the giddy "Better Than Any Drug," a song that enthusiastically sounds like
Madonna
's "Borderline" if redone by
Crystal Gayle
.
bubbles over with these kinds of inspired genre-mashing moments, which are made all the more potent by
's swaggering, palpable sense of fun. ~ Matt Collar