Ashley Monroe’s latest album, Tennessee Lightning, is all over the place musically. The songs range from solo acoustic tunes to fun rocking country tunes with a hot band to a gospel prayer. The topics span from the confessional to the fantastic, from self-penned originals to covers of cuts made popular by other artists. Monroe appropriately describes the record as “a patchwork quilt of my life” because of the breadth and scope of its 17 tracks. After several years of musical silence brought on by a battle with cancer, Monroe now has plenty to say—well, sing—about.
Although there are no songs or lyrics specifically about “Tennessee Lightning”, the album’s title seems earned. Monroe was born and raised in the Volunteer State and still lives in Nashville. The term “lightning” seems to refer to the burst of creativity Monroe experienced after putting her career on hold. There doesn’t seem to be an organizing principle. If this is a quilt, as Monroes professes, it’s a crazy quilt—the kind made from irregularly shaped pieces of various colors, textures, and patterns stitched together in a random pattern.
Guest stars, such as T Bone Burnett, Marty Stuart, Waylon Payne, and Brendan Benson, leave their impressions on Monroe’s creative story songs. The tunes may be sonically dissimilar but share a common element. Monroe finds old habits are hard to break, even as she seeks to find someone or something new. “Last night I dreamed about you again,” she sings on “There You Are”. “Time won’t stand still / This memory will,” she pines on “My Favorite Movie”.
In these and the various other songs and stories, she looks backwards to move forward and seems stifled by the present. In this way, her rendition of Leonard Cohen‘s “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” seems appropriate here as its theme of not wanting to let go and urgency to move on fits in with her original material.
“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” is one of three songs Monroe performs entirely by herself, singing background vocals as well as playing guitar and synths. That gives these songs a haunted quality, like whistling in the dark when one is alone. She turns Penny & the Quarter’s soulful “You and Me” into a lonesome plea for company and gives the original composition “There You Are” a mirrorlike quality. She professes to open her heart to another only when there is no one else there, stretching out words such as “want” and “need” with deep emotion.
In other songs, such as “Amen Love” and “Bitter Swisher Sweet” (which features Brittany Spencer). Monroe’s vocals seem restrained, as if she is afraid to let go but still attracted to the idea of being bad. “Lately I’ve been looking in the night for a miracle / Searching for a sin that’s original / Make a believer out of me,” she coos. That is a prayer, but to whom, god or the devil, is unclear. It doesn’t really matter. Her passion is the point.
No wonder she ends the album with a hymn, Albert Brumley’s “Jesus, Take My Hand” to a churchy organ accompaniment. The Southern gospel song says one is never truly alone if one is with god. Just as lightning can serve as a metaphor for inspiration, the term also has associations with the divine. Ashley Monroe implies that lightning can strike twice, once as insight but also as a reminder of the spiritual world outside of oneself.