On her new album, We've Been Going About This All Wrong, Van Etten turns her steady gaze towards the wreckage of the last few years and still finds a way to prioritize compassion.
Miranda Lambert's Palomino is, at its heart, an album about the freedom afforded by the open road. But where country music's stuck on back roads, Lambert speeds down the interstate.
Both artists could have used their new albums to make good on their pop crossover potential. Instead, they managed to reaffirm their ties to their genres of origin without sacrificing creative growth.
The Norwegian songwriter's new album interrogates what it means for her self-image to be centered on her art, while grappling with the way capitalist forces threaten to mute its radical possibilities.