Amanda Shires - Take It Like A Man (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Plenty of musicians take great pains to create distance between their lyrics and their personal lives. Amanda Shires is not one of them. Each of the 10 songs on her new album, Take It Like a Man, comes directly from her own experience, a point she emphasizes in the press notes for the album. “Everything on the record is autobiographical. I didn’t hold anything back,” Shires said.

That’s tricky enough for someone who lives a fairly public life in her own right. Add in that Shires is married to someone who’s also famous (that would be Jason Isbell), that the bulk of these songs trace the bumpy contours of their marriage and that he plays guitar on seven of them, and you can’t help but wonder if their bond is uncommonly resilient, or whether this year’s family vacation is still on. (If so, the coast of Maine is nice.) Then again, it’s no secret that relationships are complicated, even if you’re not a public figure. Not everyone has the guts to hang all that laundry on the line in full view, but Shires has always had a tendency to say what’s on her mind, however bluntly it may come across.

She doesn’t offer many soft landings on Take It Like a Man. It’s a fraught album, full of thorny feelings and barbed lyrics. It’s also her most emotionally resonant collection of songs since her 2011 LP Carrying Lightning. It’s not quite right to say that she was naive back then, but Shires, who turned 40 this year, has covered some miles since. She got married, had a daughter and lost a subsequent ectopic pregnancy. She has kept busy recording, touring on her own and with Isbell’s band, and forming her Grammy-winning country supergroup The Highwomen—not to mention struggling through a pandemic that threatened her livelihood. No wonder it hasn’t been easy to find a balance.

TRACKLIST

01. Amanda Shires - Hawk For The Dove
02. Amanda Shires - Take It Like A Man
03. Amanda Shires - Empty Cups
04. Amanda Shires - Don't Be Alarmed
05. Amanda Shires - Fault Lines
06. Amanda Shires - Here He Comes
07. Amanda Shires - Bad Behavior
08. Amanda Shires - Stupid Love
09. Amanda Shires - Lonely At Night
10. Amanda Shires - Everything Has Its Time



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