Record Revue: Kacey Musgraves – Middle of Nowhere

If you remember, Kacey Musgraves first became a meme following the 2013 CMA Awards. During Miranda Lambert‘s acceptance speech for Female Vocalist of the Year, the camera panned to Musgraves, whose natural resting face caused quite a stir. That ignited perceived bad blood between the two for 13 years, and the duet partners confirm suspicions with “Horses and Divorces,” a collab found on Musgraves’ new album, Middle of Nowhere. “It’s all whiskey under the bridge,” they sing, also referencing Musgraves’ “High Horse” and Lambert’s “Kerosene.” In letting all the pettiness go, they come together for a song about the things they have in common, like loving Willie (“what asshole doesn’t like Willie?”) and both enduring high-profile divorces. “And we both like to drink.”

Middle of Nowhere works best when Musgraves uses her barbed tongue for lyrical bloodletting. “Dry Spell” and the southern gothic-styled “Abilene” are particularly incisive, containing some of her most human verses to date. “Feelin’ overwhelmed, overworked and needin’ Jesus,” she sings in the second stanza of the latter. “Hands always gettin’ cut from pickin’ up the pieces / Always gettin’ mad and never gettin’ even.” It’s as though she’s channeling the spirit of Townes Van Zandt through Lucinda Williams. Brutally evocative, the narrative backbone demonstrates Musgraves at her pinnacle.

The very next track, “Coyote,” a collab with Gregory Alan Isakov, cracks with thunderous traces of “Abilene,” but pulls down the blinds for a more somber, inward-gazing story. “You’re only gonna hurt yourself holding out your hand, but I still think of you sometimes and the flash of fear in your eyes,” she whispers through a mist of dark acoustic guitar strings. The coyote serves as a stunning metaphor for that terrified glance of intimacy many folks get in life’s quieter getaways.

Musgraves needles a deeply introspective beauty through the album. “I Believe in Ghosts” stretches sweaty palms into the Billy Strings-featuring “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy,” but these moments perch upon opposite musical spectrums. But the album’s realest, rawest, and most visceral stirs up a torrential downpour with the last song, “Hell on Me.” In her willingness to be so vulnerable, she uncovers the pummeling emotional force of her songwriting.

Middle of Nowhere doesn’t come anywhere close to Kacey Musgraves’ career-best records (Pageant Material, Golden Hour) or even 2024’s criminally underrated Deeper Well. It’s ultimately meandering, lackluster, and frequently uninspired. Musgraves has always been known for her toothy lyricism, so it’s a real bummer that the album, largely, holds little water. Yet within the scope of these 13 songs, she lands upon several career-best songs (“Abilene,” “Dry Spell,” “Horses and Divorces), and in the age of constant streaming and tepid viral singles, that means a little something.

Middle of Nowhere is out now via Lost Highway.

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