Light, poppy indie-country with strong melodies and engaging words about life’s struggles.
“Strange Trip Ahead” is Canadian Mariel Buckley’s third studio album, after her 2018 debut “Driving in the Dark” and 2022’s “Everywhere I Used to Be”. It is no great departure from these two, but that’s okay, as it is full of good songs with great “earworm” melodies and catchy choruses.
The music can be described as indie-alt-country, which is a bit like later Lilly Hiatt albums, but lighter and less raunchy. The rock in it is tempered by the electric guitar being pushed back a little in the mix, whether it is riffing or being played as a lead. You can’t help but be reminded of eighties and nineties pop, but with no synthesisers and with a country feel, partly coming from the gentle steel guitar added. The music complements Buckley’s vocals very well to give a sound that is just good to listen to. Buckley’s voice isn’t as strident as Hiatt’s, for example, but sounds relaxed- it is not at all overblown. As a result, it makes you feel relaxed, and so is also a pleasure to listen to.
Buckley is not short of interesting things to say, mainly about relationships and the difficulties and struggles within them, and she writes in some detail. There aren’t any sugary love songs here. Instead, there are words about real life that ring true. She says that she is “navigating love, loss, and the difficult choices that shape a life”. On the opener ‘Vending Machines’, about the burnout of touring life, she starts as she means to go on with the lines: “One bad call after another/ I don’t want to worry my mother”. The “Anvil” in the second track is in her stomach as she worries about whether it would be right to have a baby with her female partner, when “We can barely handle/ The balancing/ Of whatever the other one needs”.
‘Swim Practice’ tells the story of a teen sexual relationship that you guess Buckley was involved in. ‘Somewhere Else’, which doesn’t seem autobiographical, tells of a young girl at a party facing sexual assault by an older man. In ‘Sunflowers’, a relationship is hitting the buffers, “Fresh hell/ Middle of the week/ I can tell you’re tired of it/ As you hiss through your teeth”. By contrast, ‘Nashville Now’ tells of a relationship that has actually finished, with her “brown-eyed baby” already out of the door and on her way to Nashville.
On ‘Sick of Myself’, there seems to be burnout again and a weariness: “I’ve spent/ Going on ten years to make/ This stupid career make sense”. But this is an impressive album, both in the music and in the lyrics. You hope that the words in the song were just written at a low ebb and that she can take great pride in the songs she has written here.
