Kalie Shorr - Open Book

The Guardian 80

(Kalie Shorr)
On her self-released debut, the future country star discusses some hard knocks with an abundance of empathy, humour and honesty

The country acts who break in the UK are usually the ones perceived as reformers, as if there is something automatically suspect about the genre’s heartland. But anyone beguiled by Kacey Musgraves and Sturgill Simpson’s musical expansiveness should be impressed by the raw emotional space that 25-year-old Kalie Shorr forced open with her debut album, sowing switchblades amid tough, pop-influenced country. The year before Shorr self-released Open Book, her sister died of a heroin overdose; she battled anorexia and an unfaithful, violent ex. She surveys the wreckage on hard-bitten opener Too Much to Say, warning listeners that they may find her candour uncomfortable. But Shorr’s empathy and humour makes the opposite true.