Margo Price - All American Made

The Guardian 80

(Third Man Records)

All American Made isn’t a celebratory title. As on her debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Margo Price’s America is a country in which life is hard; specifically, it’s a country in which life is hard for women. She tackles the dry subjects of news reporting with humour and vim: the idea of a song about sex discrimination in wages doesn’t sound like fun on paper, until you notice Price’s sharp eye for a killer line – “We’re all the same in the eyes of God, and the eyes of rich white men” – and get to relish the lightness of touch in the Tex-Mex musical colouring. The equally scabrous Cocaine Cowboys rides along on a 1970s soft-rock groove, with Price excoriating the men “coming from New York, LA and Seattle, they don’t have to rope no cattle”. Willie Nelson duets on Learning to Lose, and the highest praise for Price is that he sounds very much like the second most talented person on another beguiling album.

The Guardian 80

(Third Man)
Drink, depression and pedal steel all make their presence felt on the Nashville singer’s wry and charming second set

Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Margo Price’s 2016 debut, was one of those rare country records that reminded outsiders that the genre of rhinestones and melodies could still throw out plenty of grit. It established Price as a penetrating new voice, drawing on her own heart-rending tribulations – poverty, jail, bereavement – and railing against fate and the sexual politics of Nashville, where Price had long toiled unrecognised.

Price was only getting started, it turns out. All American Made finds her tour-honed band fleshing out 12 new songs in which errant lovers, “cocaine cowboys”, and double standards get it in the neck. All of this is delivered with upbeat charm and wry humour; pedal steel solos don’t so much sweeten these pills as dunk them in a vat of serotonin.

Related: Margo Price: ‘Country music is about divorce, drinking and jail’

Pitchfork 76

On her second album, one of Nashville’s biggest new stars ups the ante with a stark survey of a country in crisis.