Margo Price: Strays review – still country to the core

Margo Price couldn’t be more country. Her family lost the farm, she pawned her wedding ring and spent time in jail. But after years of rejection from Nashville, she finally came to renown through non-country channels, and with every record, this versatile songwriter continues to expand her brief.

Price’s last album, 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, nodded to Fleetwood Mac. Now, Strays adds heady organ grooves and hypnotic southern rock to her band’s considerable chops. Having given up drinking, Price has embraced magic-mushroom tea. Guitarist Mike Campbell (Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers) is a classic rock guest on Light Me Up, while Sharon Van Etten and Lucius provide more current sisterhood.

Price’s writing, though, is never far from a country theme – here, it’s freedom. And throughout, her mountain stream of a voice retains its country authority, even when she’s writing a pop tune. Radio combines a minimal electronic pulse with sweet vocal harmonies. “Only thing I have on is the radio,” she winks, on this feminist salvo about disengaging from the online world. The storytelling on Strays veers naturally towards hard times and heartbreak: Lydia is a portrait of a self-saboteur way down on her luck, while on Been to the Mountain, Price reckons she’s seen it all and lived to tell the tale.