The Chicks
The Chicks have dropped the Dixie from their name, severing one of their last ties to the Country Music scene that showed them such love only to snatch it away the second they refused to play nice with Republicans. As one of only two acts that have ever been successfully canceled (the other being Janet Jackson, both consisting of the type of strong and empowered women America loves to demonize, neither deserving the ridicule and scorn that was heaped upon them), I had thought that a Chicks reunion was out of the question for years.
But rumors of a reunion started to reach my ears a few years ago. A tour was announced. The Chicks were allowed to perform on the CMA Awards show with Beyoncé. The local country DJ played “Traveling Soldier” when I requested it. The Country world seemed to be ready. But the album wasn’t.
Fast-forward to July 15, 2020. I pick up a delivery at the local co-op, twelve beautiful and healthy chicks to be raised as laying hens and to fill the chicken coop I built from scratch a month ago in a fit of manic quarantine productivity. Now when I go into the back hall, I hear the sweet sound of baby chicks, peeping nonstop, running laps around their enclosure, alternating between avoiding their heating lamp and cuddling up beneath it. I’m in awe of the way the chicks rally around each other, cleaning wood shavings off of each other, resting their heads on each other’s backs, making joyful noise as they adjust to their strange new surroundings.
Two days later, I hear the sounds of a different set of Chicks through the Bluetooth speaker in my bedroom. The sounds are more melodic, they harmonize, and they play their own instruments. But these Chicks share the sense of sisterhood and camaraderie with the chicks in my house, and they’re trying to navigate a world just as strange, one that has fallen apart along with a marriage.
Gaslighter is the album we deserve in these trying times, an album that sucks you into the world and makes you forget your troubles outside of its narrative. The Titular track is a call to arms against a shitty man and sets up the conflict that will be revisited throughout the rest of the album. (It’s also where we first discover that Natalie Maines’s husband fucked a lady on their family boat I guess???)
The details of infidelity on this album are heartbreaking in their specificity. There’s no illusion here. When Ms. Maines sings that “My husband’s girlfriend’s husband just called me up, how messed up is that?” on “Sleep at Night”, there is no doubt in my mind that this is something that has happened to her. This isn’t a Mitski-type fictional album. Maines is the one who had to laugh at the absurdity of the situation before releasing how unfunny it is that her two little boys will be torn apart by the infidelity and lies.
The most heartbreaking moments come on “Everybody Loves You”, which physically hurt my stomach to listen to. And “Young Man” is so tender and showcases the tricky balancing act of making sure a child knows that he should still admire the good parts of his father even if he broke up their family. In a year full of pseudo-emotional bro-country ballads, the ladies once dismissed as “Sadam’s Angels” have released the most personal and impactful country songs of the year by far.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention “March March”, the only overtly political song on the project. Lyrically, it’s brilliant. Musically, it wasn’t for me. That’s okay, I’m happy it exists. It’s uncompromising and perfectly snarky. There’s a line about 3D printing guns and taking them to the gun range followed by a spoken “Cut the shit, you ain’t going to the gun range.” It’s a timely protest song for sure.
But first and foremost, this is an album of loss and divorce, but where it really shines is in its moments of hope. “My Best Friend’s Wedding” is the purest distillation of the album as a whole. The bluegrass and country elements shine, and the harmonies are on point. A subtle synth bassline strums underneath, adding to the soundscape without ever overpowering it. The song is in turns regretful and hopeful, such sweet sadness, the perfect example of melancholy as it was described to me in Because of Winn-Dixie that I never verified with a dictionary. It’s such a mature approach to sorrow, a slight smile as a face turns to the future, an acknowledgement that life doesn’t end after divorce.
And it is immediately followed by “Tights On My Boat”, a perfectly petty and bitter breakup song that starts with the scathing line “I hope you die peacefully in your sleep, just kidding, I hope it hurts like you hurt me” and includes the repeated refrain “you’re going to get what you’ve got coming to you”. It’s the perfect chaser to the sweetness of the song immediately preceding it.
Gaslighter sees The Chicks sounding the best they ever have, and that’s saying something. While they may not have been recording together for the last fourteen years, the album is so cohesive and brilliant that it makes you wonder what took them so long. It feels criminal that The Chicks have been depriving us of their collective talents for this long (Yes I’m aware of Court Yard Hounds and that Natalie Maines solo album. They’re fantastic, but not the same).
This is an album that bounces between the hopelessness and the hopefulness, that relishes in wondering whether there’s darkness or light at the end of the tunnel. And with production by the master of the breakup album, Jack Antonoff in his first country outing, The Chicks have hit their stride so hard it’s a wonder that it doesn’t break.
The chicks in my home are at the beginning of their lives, but The Chicks I’ve been playing on repeat have lived full lives. They’ve fought sexism, prejudice, the GOP, Toby Keith, and Mainstream Country Radio to be exactly who they are, and who they are is one of the greatest Country bands of all time. Truly, I believe that if they were still beholden to the Mainstream Country Music Industrial Complex, this album would not be nearly as good. It certainly wouldn’t be able to use no-no words so freely and effectively.
At a time when we need White Women to not be Shitty, The Chicks have arrived to pledge their support. And for that, we must thank them.
Jesse Freaking Rogers 