MORGAN WADE : RECKLESS

MORGAN WADE : RECKLESS

Wilder Days
Matches And Metaphors
Other Side
Don't Cry
Mend
Last Cigarette
Take Me Away
Reckless
Northern Air
Met You
Carry Me Home
When The Dirt All Settles
Run
The Night
Through Your Eyes
Suspicious Minds

Label : Arista

Release Date : January 28, 2022

Length : 59:38

Review (Saving Country Music) : For years we’ve been on the hunt for that woman who can rise up from the ranks of independent country artists to be a game changer that challenges the mainstream like we’ve seen from Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, Cody Jinks, and the like. As successful as the independent side of country has been these last few years in launching artists to turn the tables on the mainstream monopoly, it’s been seriously lopsided at the top end as we’ve seen artists such as Margo Price and others sold as independent superstars struggle to find that next tier of success. It’s not from a lack of talent. The line forms to the left with women whose music is worthy of such rising action. But strangely, there is commonly a disconnect between those women, and the ones touted the loudest in the media or in the public. That lack of consensus has resulted in a crater in representation. That is where Morgan Wade has entered the conversation, and done so with a lot of initial praise and promise, born off the resonance of live performances on YouTube of stellar tear-stained original songs, and buzz from important sectors. From Roanoke, Virginia, she comes from the right region in Appalachia that has birthed so many of the current generation’s country heroes. Her sleeves of ink and neck tattoos might be a liability with the blue hairs, but also speak to the real, gritty, lived-in attitude that is behind much of the appeal of independent country music at the moment. Morgan Wade has the authenticity true country audiences crave. Now after numerous videos reaching well above 100,000 views, Morgan Wade drops her debut album Reckless on us, produced by Sadler Vaden who is best known as the guitarist in Jason’s Isbell’s 400 Unit. As promised, many of the songs of Reckless speak to Morgan Wade’s unsettled mind, reminding you very much of your own troubled moments, even if left behind in youth. From nervous breakdowns to searing assessments of self-worth amid torrid and broken relationships, as Morgan Wade pinballs between emotional meltdowns, so do you in a way that awakens the juices of life in an agreeable manner. The specificity in Morgan Wade’s stories of heartbreak such as “Mend” and “Northern Air” tear at the heart, while the yearning and lonesomeness at the core of “Take Me Away” reels you right in. Wade’s confident but weathered voice with a hint of Southern flavor envelops the words in a level or realism impossible to counterfeit, and improbable to earn with mere practice and emulation. Either you carry the weight like Morgan Wade does—and sing about your troubles not because you want to, but because you have to—or you don’t. What seems amiss here though is how this is all presented in the production and music of Reckless. What we were sold not just by the media and marketing of this album, but also in our mind’s eye when we watched her perform songs acoustically was an Outlaw country, or country rock artist with the grit, story, and skin art to back it up. But what we receive on Reckless is much more an Americana project that at times creeps towards Triple A, and even pop. When the first song on the album “Wilder Days” starts up, you immediately think of Jason Isbell’s “24 Frames,” while lines like “The way you move your hands across my body. I’m kissing you in a hotel lobby…” feel more suitable for Taylor Swift. It’s not really that the album isn’t country enough. Morgan Wade is a songwriter first, which gives herself and producers the latitude to explore whatever sonic landscapes they feel are right for a given song. It’s just that Reckless isn’t really country at all, almost purposely avoiding those elements that are intuitive to her music, while at times also including production decisions that straight up poison the well with the same independent country audiences we all believed this album was set up to appeal to, like the finger snaps and “ooh-oohs” of the otherwise well-written song “Last Cigarette,” or the senseless electronic drums at the start and refrain of the title track. None of this sullies the songwriting performance of Reckless, which at times is spectacular, even if some other moments feel a little burdened with lazy rhymes. But even on the songwriting front which is the strength of the record, there’s decisions to second guess. It was original songs by Morgan Wade like “The Night” and “Left Me Behind” that lit the spark behind her through engaging live acoustic performances. These were the songs that built the buzz behind her. But those songs didn’t make it on this record, while others that are probably not as good did. Perhaps the calculus here was those songs that created the sharp appeal for Morgan Wade were already worn out by the audience because they’ve become so popular, or perhaps the idea is to hold them back for the next session in the studio. But those decisions mean Reckless is not Morgan Wade putting her best foot forward on this important debut. Instead of centering more around her songs of working through personal struggles which helped swell much of the interest behind Morgan, Reckless is more a series of love songs. This is one of those instances where there is a lot of negative to say about an album that overall still results in a positive experience and outcome. If we had been sold Morgan Wade as an Americana artist and this album had landed in our laps randomly, we would be praising the amount of grit and sweat that comes through the otherwise pallid production, and focusing much more on the songs themselves. Again, it’s not just that the record is not country. It’s that the production and music are just not very imaginative, and don’t seem to fulfill the narrative Morgan Wade sets with her countenance and her original compositions. We shouldn’t assume this album wasn’t the outcome Morgan Wade was aiming for. Part of the issue might be what everyone else envisioned when hearing her perform acoustically just wasn’t what Morgan Wade had envisioned for herself. Still, when you have No Depression saying the album “brings a new voice and vitality to Outlaw Country,” it sets a style expectation that Reckless just can’t fulfill. You’ll still see a ton of praise for Reckless. It’s one of those buzzed-about records. But some of that will be praising the artist they fell in love with on YouTube, and not the record they were delivered. Nonetheless, you listen to tracks like “Mend,” “Take Me Away,” and the final song “Met You,” and you understand what all the buzz is about. Morgan Wade is that great songwriter that drips authenticity, and that very well could rise from the ranks of independent artists to disrupt the mainstream. That is why it’s worth discussing her music so in-depth. And for a first chapter, Reckless is not bad. It’s just by the end, you get a sense the best of Morgan Wade could still be yet to come.

Review (Slant Magazine) : Morgan Wade grew up in the heart of Southwest Virginia—the same area of Appalachia from which the Carter Family and the Stanley Brothers hail—and her voice, a raspy soprano drenched in twang, is shaped by that geography. It’s a voice that sounds like it was built for murder ballads and songs about cheatin’ and drinkin’. But the 26-year-old singer-songwriter isn’t that kind of artist, and on her debut album, she refuses to be typecast. Produced by Sadler Vaden, Reckless is striking in the way it upends expectations. Although country music is unmistakably present in the DNA of these 10 songs—from the glossy Nashville sheen that underscores opener “Wilder Days” to the aching sway of “Mend”—it’s not the driving force. You won’t find a lick of banjo, fiddle, or steel guitar on the album, and Wade’s songwriting steers clear of country music’s most common tropes, like religion and family, and the caricatures of rural identity that have become the hallmarks of country radio. Instead, Reckless revolves around issues like addiction, mental health, and isolation—plights that are central to exurban life but mostly ignored by the music that claims to represent that culture. Wade navigates these topics with stark, evocative storytelling. “Tonight I am numb from a cocktail of pills,” she sings on “Met You,” the album’s haunting final track. “I hallucinate, think I’m touching your skin/I’d much rather die than think of the bed that you’re in.” It’s an affecting lyric in its own right, but it’s even more so when considered in context. Like many of America’s rural communities, Appalachia has been ravaged by the opioid epidemic over the past two decades. For those, like Wade, who grew up in places like this, addiction is omnipresent, a defining characteristic of their hometowns. So it’s no surprise that it shapes almost every song here in ways that are often subtle but deeply consequential. With a few exceptions, these are songs of desire, dependence, and desperation—of a narrator who’s searching for a way to make things better, even if that means settling for a temporary reprieve. At the same time that vital stories like these are excluded from country music, singers with voices like Wade’s are also denied a place in the broader popular culture. We rarely hear pop or rock that features thick mountain accents or deep Texas drawls—not a surprising fact considering the structural bias that exists against regional dialects (especially Southern ones). Faced with this dilemma, most artists choose one of two paths: cater to the stringent demands required to fit into the country music machine—which dictates everything from what you can sing about to how you dress—or learn to perform in ways that belie their roots. Wade makes no such compromises on Reckless. She blends pop and country without subjugating either, all the while covering a wide swath of stylistic ground that runs from searing country ballads like “Mend,” to the sauntering Southern rock of “Take Me Away,” to the radio-ready shimmer of “Last Cigarette,” a perfectly crafted track that takes cues from Halsey and the Chainsmokers. That Wade is equally compelling in all of these modes is a testament to her powerful, versatile, and unique voice. It’s also a remarkable accomplishment considering the scale of the project. Only seven musicians, including Wade, appear throughout the album, but Vaden’s production offers Wade plenty of space without leaving the arrangements too sparse, which—given the rustic character of her voice—could have made Reckless come off like a roots record. Instead, each of the album’s 10 tracks features just the right level of polish and embellishment—especially the ballads, where Vaden’s masterful guitar playing shines, and where the occasional, well-placed synth or Mellotron adds depth to an otherwise guitar-heavy album.

Review (Metal Planet Music) : Everywhere you look within the modern Country scene, you’ll find a plethora of young female artists busily ploughing their own furrow through the tangled corporate web that is the modern Nashville scene. There is a huge pool of talent out there creating everything form very traditional country and Americana through to glossy and hi-tech Country-Pop. ‘Reckless’, the recently released album by Morgan Wade sits firmly in the Americana Country bracket and sits very comfortably at the least corporate end of the Nashville spectrum – there’s not a hint of Country-Pop anywhere to be found within the grooves of this stunning album and it’s all the better for it. Morgan Wade’s music sits quite comfortably alongside artists such as the wonderful Ashley McBryde (whose latest album I reviewed for Metal Planet a few months ago) in that it’s completely self-written/co-written, it doesn’t follow Nashville norms and her image – all tattoos and imperfectly coiffured hair – is definitely not the squeaky-clean, prettified airbrush glow that many artists portray. You get the feeling that, despite her tender years, Morgan Wade has more than paid her dues in the dodgy dive-bars and the lyrics definitely suggest that she’s living the rock n roll lifestyle to the full. It’s refreshing, genuine and very believable. The production is clean and tight, while at the same time having a delightful rawness that is missing from a lot of modern Country. The electric guitars snarl and bite with just the right amount of twang, ably supported by acoustic guitars and mandolins: nothing is overdone. Wilder Days’ opens the album with chiming, chugging Telecaster guitars and irresistible melodies. It sets the tone for the album quite beautifully. Wade’s vocals are raw, personal and impassioned, a trend that continues all the way through the album, largely because the lyrics sound as though they are written from her own personal experience – you really get the feeling that she is living this stuff! Quite how anyone can make a killer hookline out of the line ‘You say you hate the smell of cigarette smoke’ deserves some respect too, and it’s immediately apparent that lyrically, this album isn’t ordinary – they are not the typical lyrics you’ll hear in a lot of the corporate Nashville releases. Wilder Days’ seems to be about an older man from Chicago who Wade is having a ‘thing’ with – ‘You say I’m too young for you, you’re just scared I’m too right for you’, she purrs before the ‘I wish I’d known you in your Wilder Days’ pay-off at the end of the chorus. On ‘Other Side’ she sings ‘You knew my skin back before I had all these tattoos, You remember me on late nights strung out on pills and booze.’ In ‘Mend’ she sings ‘I was out of my head as I climbed in your bed’ and ‘No words spoken, I’m so broken, I hope you can mend me.’ This is hardly the typical Nashville lyrical fare and is all the better because of it – this is the darker side of real life, love and heartbreak in the dive bars, motels and small towns of middle America, yet somehow it feels true and relevant, even if you live on the outskirts of a city in Cambridgeshire, England (or probably anywhere else, for that matter!) Singling out individual songs is a wee bit tricky as this album is a very complete piece of work, but if pushed, I’d say that ‘Wilder Days’ is pretty much the perfect single release; catchy as hell, with a delightful vocal and a clean and sizzling production. ‘Last Cigarette’ is another belter with an impassioned hookline; the ‘last cigarette’ being the metaphor for one last night together in a doomed relationship. Title track ‘Reckless’ is a stunning mid-paced slice of guitar-fuelled Americana with a lovely guitar solo full of aching string bends and passionate note flurries echoing the heartbreak in the lyrics. This is one hell of an album. If you like artists such as the aforementioned Ashley McBryde, who are very happy to stick two fingers up to the corporate pop-country world of Nashville and produce raw, passionate and real Americana/Country then you should investigate this album immediately. Lyrically, it’s raw, dark, real and not always comfortable and musically it is warm, impassioned and highly melodic. In short, it’s an absolute gem that Morgan Wade should certainly be very proud of!

Review (Red Guitar Muisc) : For some artists timing is everything. Sometimes it’s because your face suddenly fits and your take on a chosen genre finds a home, but for others, it’s a little more complicated. Raised in Floyd, a small town in Virginia, Morgan Wade was surrounded by the sounds of country, predominantly bluegrass, from an early age. In later years as she began to progress as a singer and a songwriter, Wade struggled to picture her voice alongside the likes of Shania Twain and Faith Hill on the radio “Alright, well, I’m not going to sing for anybody else - but I’m singing for myself”. Wade played publicly for the first time at 19 with a band picked up via Craigslist (probably not something that I would advise all things considered) and the ball started rolling. Many a gig later Wade met producer Sadler Vaden at Floydfest the annual music festival in her hometown and they hit it off. If you check out any of Wade’s solo sessions on youTube or Spotify you’ll realise that Vaden (also a solo artist and Jason Isbell‘s guitarist) had the delicate task of capturing the distinctive singer’s essence and not turn her into the Shania that she couldn’t relate to back in the day. I’m pleased to report we’ve nothing to fear on that front as Vaden and engineer Paul Ebersold have done a great job on an album that is almost as much a rock record as it is a country one. The other striking thing about Wade is lyrical honesty. Wade has been open about her problems with alcohol and doesn’t consider mental health discussions off-limits. “Is It a rule in the South you don’t talk about mental health?” she scathingly recounted on the 2019 single ‘The Night’. The realism Wade brings to her songs is to be applauded and proved a timely reminder of why I love country music done right. Wade delivers the lyrics with a voice that can soothe seductively or turn into a growling drawl at the drop of a hat. It seems to be a very individual voice which I’m guessing relates to her Virginia roots. The press release tells us Wade is a soprano but it’s the accent that makes it special. The singles used as a taster for 'Reckless' do a fine job as an aperitif to the main course. Lush, but not overbearing and with just a little touch of echo occasionally accentuating the vocal ‘Wilder Days’ is radio-friendly due to Vaden’s production choices. Lyrically Wade laments on her older lover’s past and wonders what he might have been like if she’d met him years before “I wish I’d known you In your wilder days” while delivering lines such as “What were you like when you were a little wilder, why don’t you show me” with seductive power. The gorgeous ‘Take Me Away’ builds from a simple acoustic beginning into something of shimmering intensity “Lay me down on the floor in the kitchen, show my angry heart what it’s been missing” is not a lyric that all performers would be comfortable with but Wade owns it. The sound of a guitar feeding back ushers in the immense ‘Don’t Cry’ and acts as a warning that shit is gonna happen but you can deal with it. There’s some rather lovely, gentle instrumentation that, on occasion, peaks out from under a bed of tough electric guitar. You’ll believe “It’s okay to not be alright”. Much of ‘Reckless’ feels reflective and Wade is certainly not afraid to dig into and re-examine her past. The ‘Other Side’ is a fine example of this but with an underlying positivity “You knew my skin before I had all these tattoos” while the punchy ‘Last Cigarette’ might deal with weighty subjects but that thumping bass and those backing vocals surely make it perfect for radio and not necessarily country radio. Elsewhere the hard-rockin' title track wouldn’t have been totally out of place on the Bryan Adams ‘Reckless’ album with its driving guitars while the shuffling beat, twangy guitar and atmospheric synth of ‘Northern Air’ seems a world apart but it all hangs together beautifully. In all honesty, I’ve (probably) left the best for last with the stark, haunting ‘Met You’ a vocal tour-de-force over acoustic guitars with occasional keyboard flourishes that sound strangely like twinkling stars (not that I know what a star sounds like but hopefully you’ll get the idea). Wade sings “I'd much rather die than think of the bed you’re In” and I'm sure I can feel her pain while ‘Mend’ could well be the best thing I’ve heard in ages. “I’m not much of anything, you’re my everything” is a particularly harrowing lyric while “No words spoken, I’m so broken, I hope you can mend me” hits the spot equally well on a slab of heartbreakingly intimate country balladry. ‘Reckless’ is a fantastic release from an artist who deserves to make some serious waves. The combination of Wade’s voice and the production choices of Sadler Vaden (and I’m assuming his guitar playing) are a perfect combination. Few artists would be as comfortable switching from acoustic guitars to cutting electric guitars, or even an occasional sparse synth as Vaden does here. Morgan Wade does this with ease via a combination of superb songs, her sheer personality and that quite wonderful voice. ‘Reckless’ comes very highly recommended.