Americana has long been a frontier for men, and rockier territory for the women who trail in the dust of troubadours like Zach Bryan. While in recent days, we’ve seen a wave of women carving their own path toward this frontier, many land closer to the country border than its Americana neighbor. Anna Graves’s America’s Greatest Burnout, however, attempts greater exploration of the latter. She takes the road less traveled for women in the genre, placing an X on the edge of territory that men have overpowered for decades.
Across the record, she reaches into a vocal cabinet stocked with soaring range, builds soundscapes woven from dream and drear, and tells stories with lyricism so descriptive it reads like a litmus test for any reader that dares to try and unravel stories that belong in her autobiographical novel. Hence, the project is an exposé on the various metaphors one can use to describe a given feeling or situation.
Track two, “Damn in Love,” makes good on that promise, unraveling the quiet death of a relationship. It’s allegorical in its bones: a woman screaming from a mountaintop, her pleas swallowed by the growing distance between two people who were once a unit.
That same dramatic, cinematic imagery threads through the record, most strikingly on “Hollow Bones,” which explains her inner mind through symbolism that uncovers insecurity, emotional porousness, and an over-active mind. The 28-year old equates a mind filled with water to overthinking when she wishes to be free like a “rolling stone,” and thunder in her chest to the weight of pain.
While a majority of songs are lyrically impressive, at times, Graves dances between abtruse literary hooks and more casual, modern-lingo and the two don’t always sit comfortably together. When dipping into simpler lyricism, the change in quality is underscored against the more polished writing surrounding it.
In these instances, Graves seems to hide behind her own tone, under-singing lines like “I thought I lost you in a weird phase” and letting the instrumentation swallow her voice, enabling the melody to smooth over the disjointed writing underneath. The instrumentation flows effortlessly, but the ideas appear unrelated. “Burn On” follows in these footsteps, moving from dense and slowly-understood storytelling in describing her character, to a simplistic chorus frenetically repeating “so, baby, burn on (ooh, ooh)”
That said, this is a melodically ambitious record, and a delightful one. Graves moves between folk-leaning ballads and the bare bones of traditional country, and somehow the whole thing holds together despite constantly shifting shape. “Goldmine” leans on the mournful whine of a pedal steel guitar and gets pulled further into country territory by a harmonica. “Jaded Songbirds” pairs basic piano chords against cavernous electric guitar swipes. “Ashes & Smoke” pushes that in-between feeling even further, using production choices that pull the song away from country even as it leans on the same pedal steel and acoustic guitar that define so much of today’s mainstream sound.
For decades, country music reserved its biggest successes almost exclusively for men, and, crossing the gender line, especially within the confines of Americana or folk, is no small feat. That said, capitalizing on the evolution of the genre’s sound as it swings back toward lyrical depth and older instrumentation, clears a path forward for women out of the bro-era and into a space where female artists can stand alongside the Americana men currently dominating the genre. Anna Graves is proof of that.
With a sweet tone and upper register reminiscent of early Kacey Musgraves and Ruth B, this is a rare country-adjacent record built to welcome listeners drawn to the introspective storytelling of Phoebe Bridgers or Taylor Swift, without ever alienating listeners rooted deep in traditional country. America’s Greatest Burnout offers enough range for anyone that enjoys the Americana sounds that seep into the ever-growing country umbrella. It’s a gentle reminder of how effortlessly these genres bleed into one another sonically, and at the foundation, lyrically.
