MARGO PRICE : THAT'S HOW RUMOURS GET STARTED

1. That's How Rumors Get Started
2. Letting Me Down
3. Twinkle Twinkle
4. Stone Me
5. Hey Child
6. Heartless Mind
7. What Happened To Our Love?
8. Gone To Stay
9. Prisoner Of The Highway
10. I'd Die For you

Label : Loma Vista

Release Date : July 10, 2020

Length : 35:38

Review (AllMusic) : Authenticity became a byword for the music of Margo Price, likely due to the dramatic story behind her 2016 debut album Midwest Farmer's Daughter. Self-funded and released on Jack White's Third Man Records, the album felt like a throwback to the glory days of outlaw country, a sound that enlivened and emphasized her hard-luck stories. Price sustained that vibe on 2017's All American Made but she started to broaden her purview, laying the groundwork for the lush, expansive That's How Rumors Get Started. Superficially, That's How Rumors Get Started appears to be the reverse image of the flinty Midwest Farmer's Daughter, swapping its lean immediacy for ornate arrangements that occasionally evoke memories of the early '80s, when New Wave country and album-oriented rock sometimes intermingled. Price rarely indulges in nostalgia or retro-fetishism, the vintage sounds function as coloring and texture on an album whose songs are clearly the work of the storyteller of Midwest Farmer's Daughter. Initially, though, the production is the arresting element of That's How Rumors Get Started. Price hired Sturgill Simpson as producer and he helped assemble a group of studio pros who are names in their own right, including keyboardist Benmont Tench, bassist Pino Palladino, and guitarist Matt Sweeney. The ensemble plays with an elegant elasticity throughout That's How Rumors Get Started, letting ballads swell to an emotional crescendo but also happy to settle into a country-soul groove or slather on the fuzz guitars, as they do on "Twinkle Twinkle." It's a disparate set of sounds, united by an AOR pulse and Price's sincerity; she may crack a joke, but she's never singing with a smirk. There's a confidence in her vocal performances that reflects the album's spirit: She's comfortable following her obsessions and idiosyncrasies to their logical end, resulting in a record that comforts and challenges in equal measure.

Review (Pitchfork) : With country as her foundation, the versatile singer and songwriter pivots toward classic rock. She sounds less like the honky-tonk rebel and more like the Nashville professional. Margo Price wasn't always a country singer. Long before she nodded to Loretta Lynn with the title of her 2016 solo debut, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, she gigged around Nashville in a variety of bands, playing British Invasion rock with Secret Handshake and soul and classic rock with Buffalo Clover. She proved as adaptable as she was ambitious, fitting her voice to multiple genres and developing an impressive stylistic range that was bound to be underappreciated in Nashville. After a series of tragedies and misfortunes-the loss of a child, jail time for drunk driving, professional inertia-she finally leaned into country music, assembling a barnstorming backing band called the Price Tags to set her woes to a honky-tonk soundtrack. That's How Rumors Get Started represents a pivot away from twang toward a more classic rock sound-something closer to Buffalo Clover than her previous two albums. She named Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac as touchstones, perhaps even hat-tipping the latter with that album title, and recorded in Los Angeles, at the storied EastWest Studios, with a group of session players including Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers and Matt Sweeney from Chavez and Zwan. Co-producing is her old friend Sturgill Simpson, who sat in with the Price Tags many years ago and has his own strained relationship with country music. What ought to be a remarkable lineup, however, sounds overly constrained on Rumors, which lacks the heroic self-determinism of Daughter and the eccentricity of All American Made. This isn't a case of "anything but country," though. It's more like "anything and country." That remains the foundation of her songwriting, but she's reaching out in new directions, tinkering with different sounds and settings with hit-or-miss results. The flatulent guitars on "Twinkle Twinkle" so strongly recall the bouncy blues-rock of the Black Keys that it just might constitute a casual dig at her old label Third Man and its co-founder Jack White. Much more compelling is "Heartless Mind," which uses country as a springboard into New Wave. Price's voice sounds surprisingly comfortable, invigorated even, alongside the drum machine, the bobbing organ, and the processed guitars, at times channeling Marilyn Martin without sounding especially retro. It's the most animated track on the album, the riskiest but also among the most rewarding. Primarily, though, Price is interested in gospel music and the drama it injects into her songs. The churchly melodies and jubilant harmonies of the Nashville Friends Gospel Choir lend momentum and road-dog romance to "Prisoner of the Highway," about the sacrifices you make as a touring musician, but those same elements are a distraction on "What Happened to Our Love?" which erupts into melodrama about halfway through, like a jump scare in a bad horror flick. When Buffalo Clover recorded the slow-burning "Hey Child" for their 2013 album Test Your Love, Price sang it like she was stuck in Memphis rather than L.A., her voice bouncing off the mournful Stax horns. Since then, she has become a more nuanced singer, which is apparent in the quieter moments on this new version, but the slick sound of Rumors sacrifices spontaneity for a scripted climax. In this West Coast setting, Price sounds less like the honky-tonk rebel and more like the Nashville professional. That can sharpen the ironies as well as the hooks of a song like "Letting Me Down," with its prickly guitars and concrete details, but on the title track she sounds oddly resigned, even a little melancholy as she confronts someone spreading lies about her. "And here you are, still doin' you," she sings. "It never worked out, but it never stopped you." Those are great lines, rich in their accusations, but there's no sting in her voice, just a weary resignation. No artist has to bristle constantly, but Price's outrage at industry double standards made her previous solo albums sound righteous, and her pain at life's tragedies resonated even if you didn't know her backstory. Rumors buffs away some of the rougher edges that made her so much more compelling than so many of Nashville's aspiring singer-songwriters. Those albums made the fight sound worthwhile, but there's too little fight in these songs.

Review (Variety) : You can take the girl out of the country, and maybe you can also take the country out of the girl. Or perhaps that's taking it a bit far, but Margo Price isn't paying undue fealty to the traditional country feel that first brought her to the dance now that she's on her third album. "That's How Rumors Get Started," which finds her working not just with a new label (Loma Vista in place of Jack White's Third Man imprint) but a new producer, Sturgill Simpson. Having made a significant sonic break of his own from old-school country, it's possible Simpson is the one who put the bug in her ear about not staying too indebted to the Nudies-suit sound. Most likely, though, she's just falling deeper into sway into a different kind of gentle Southern rock - something we could reasonably call Tom Petty country - because "Wildflowers" doesn't care where it grows. (Benmont Tench is among the players, so that's a slight tip-off to where she's headed.) "That's How Rumors Get Started" also finds some lyrical departures, getting further from the drinking tropes of her breakout songs from 2016's "Midwest Farmer's Daughter" but also not diverting as much to the heightened social consciousness of 2017's "All American Made." The 10 songs on this lovely and mostly subdued collection deal tend toward the most universal singer-songwriter themes: being glad your ex is an ex; wondering how to keep your current partner from becoming an ex; pondering whether love might survive the grave. and, of course, The Road. That last one is a big one on this album, as Price weighs the cost-benefit ratio of constant touring and being a road dog. With itinerancy casting such a heavy shadow over the album, it seems like a dispatch from an alternate reality coming out now in the summer of 2020, reminding listeners of a time when musicians just couldn't wait to get on the road again, but could and did. Someday the back-to-back laments about being "Gone to Stay" or a "Prisoner of the Highway" won't sound like science fiction, but they sure do right now. But most of the new album deals with the discomforts of home and relationships therein in a reflective mode that's apropos for the cabin-fever moment. "Heartless Mind" is the barnburner of the record, all swirly organs, psyched-out twin guitar leads and nervous energy that contends "love's a house that might be haunted." Since Price's husband, Jeremy Ivey, co-wrote nearly all these songs and plays guitar on most of them, we can probably infer that the state of the union is strong. But she's not afraid to explore what domestic anxiety feels like all tour roads have led home. "What Happened to Our Love?," which sounds like the great George Harrison/Gram Parsons collaboration that never was - and which may be the most stirring, affecting thing she's ever written - uses poetically hyperbolic metaphors to suggest a soulmate union made in heaven, then wonders how it can all go to hell anyway, as the coda turns the anxiety into something like a full-gospel ballad. In the finale, the ruggedly rhythm-guitar based "I'd Die for You," she finally revives some of the faintly political overtones familiar from the last album - choosing as her setting a beleaguered downtown where "boards go up, signs go down," giving way to "naked streets of Babylon." But that small-town starkness is really just a place for her to make a stand for a deathless romantic love. It resembles nothing so much as U2's "All I Want is You," as Price stands torch-bearing and true. The song may be twang-less, but it captures everything despairing and uplifting country music ever stood for. so maybe she's not so far from Harlan Howard's or Bono's vision of three chords and the truth.