Record Revue: Mickey Guyton, The Blue Iris, and Jake Wesley Rogers

Welcome to Record Revue, an EP and album review series

If you’re open to it, you can uncover healing in music. Lord knows I’ve needed it the last month. You never really appreciate something, or something, until they’re gone and airlifted out of this world. Through the smoke and ruin, art moves you to dig deeper into your life, perhaps overturning parts of yourself you had long forgotten or purposely buried. The third edition here is utterly transformative, for vastly different reasons, leaving only power in its place.

Check out the latest batch of reviews below.

Mickey Guyton, Remember Her Name

I remember the very first time I heard “Better Than You Left Me,” which shook the Opry stage in early 2014 as her official debut single. I was floored. Several months later, I witnessed her greatness in person during CMT’s Next Women of Country event. It had all the markings of a surefire radio hit, yet it treaded water, and her career floundered. A debut long-player seemed out of the question, as country radio continued its reliance on racism and systemic oppression. I can’t say I was ever surprised, and a talent such as Guyton’s appeared like a ghost in the night. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s six years later, and we finally have a full-length album. Remember Her Name is as a lighthouse on the shoreline, a bright and moving beckon of hope, heart, and passion. The singer-songwriter scorches the very earth on which she walks, from the earth-shattering “Black Like Me,” in which she details her experiences as a Black woman in U.S., and “Love My Hair” to the effervescent “Rosé” and a cover of Beyonce’s “If I Were a Boy.” 16 songs bend through radio-ready filters, musically arrangements you’d hear on any radio station, to fang-toothed songwriting about experiences only Guyton could impart. Remember Her Name, indeed.

The Blue Iris, The Loneliness

Feverish angst erupts from their skin. “I’ll clean the blood up later,” The Blue Iris snaps and snarls over crinkly guitar chords. “Stressed and Depressed” is a solar flare ripping across the sun’s surface, emitting such a shock to the system it both jars and allures you into a dark vortex of punk, rock, and indie. The Loneliness builds itself around the singer-songwriter’s ability to detonate the senses, casting you down on all fours to crawl through emotional mud and eventually shedding your former skin. Songs like “Pity Party On, Wayne!” crack into the skull, while “Jump Scares in Surround Sound (Nothing Part 2)” slithers and slides down the backbone, a somber confessional both in vocal performance and arrangement, almost like a candle’s flame nearing a tattered end. Guitar static rises as fumes, accentuating The Blue Iris’ raw, uncanny ability to make you rage and cry in the same breath. Their journey is only just beginning, yet their performances propose they’ve been doing this for decades. The Blue Iris is that sort of talent.

Jake Wesley Rogers, Pluto EP

A pop spectacle, Jake Wesley Rogers mines well-tended soil, courtesy of Elton John, but erects his own magical cathedral. Rogers’ Pluto EP is rich with moving, soul-baring songwriting, from “Middle of Love,” containing such needle-point lyrics as “my grandma died ’cause that’s what people do,” to palpitating “Under the Sun. All the while, Rogers takes your heart in his very hands, as he meanders from unimaginable pain to celebration of even the mundane moments to deep reflections on generational inheritances. Whether laced with piano or boisterous, glistening arrangements, the songs fall together like puzzle pieces in a Tetris game — with Rogers commanding such presence you may get the impression he’s a legend-in-hiding. There’s a fearlessness to the work, ignited with the electrifying opener “Weddings & Funerals” (“I don’t wanna die, at least not tonight,” he sings through teardrops), that hangs thick in the air, an inescapable entity that’ll force you to confront everything about your own existence. Jake Wesley Rogers will be a household name. It’s only a matter of time.

Follow B-Sides & Badlands on our socials: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram