Molly Tuttle started making a name for herself in bluegrass circles in the late 2010s, when her debut EP Rise and her first LP When You’re Ready showcased her impressive guitar skills. Interestingly, it wasn’t until she assembled Golden Highway, an equally skilled ensemble of bluegrass players, that she was recognized outside of the rather insular world of bluegrass music. Both of her albums with Golden Highway, Crooked Tree and City of Gold, won the Grammy award for Best Bluegrass Album, while Tuttle earned a Best New Artist nomination at the 2023 Grammys.
It’s interesting, after all this success, to see her jettisoning the band, but here we are. So Long Little Miss Sunshine is billed as a Molly Tuttle solo album, featuring a crew of professional Nashville musicians and a lot of fiddler Ketch Secor from Old Crow Medicine Show, who is also Tuttle’s romantic partner. Accordingly, it’s a record that finds Tuttle stretching out her sound a bit, though her songwriting and guitar skills continue to be on full display.
One would be forgiven for thinking Sunshine’s first single, “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark”, is Tuttle’s cynical bid to fill the female pop-country void left when Taylor Swift went fully pop. It’s a slickly produced, exceedingly catchy track that heavily features organ, prominent drums, and even handclaps. It’s also a sterling example of a great pop-country song, and will instantly get stuck in a listener’s head and continue to rattle around for days afterward. Tuttle’s smooth vocal performance features little in the way of country affectations, but her guitar leads continue to be pure bluegrass. The guitar style is an interesting feature that tethers Tuttle to her bluegrass roots, and it does that throughout So Long Little Miss Sunshine.
“That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” is far and away the standout commercial single, but a few other tracks have a similar production sheen on them. “Easy” is appropriately easygoing, a relaxed mid-tempo country song. Lyrically, Tuttle pulls a minor switch on expectations. The song is about her nervousness over breaking up with a boyfriend, only to discover he’d been cheating on her. “So torn that I was tearing our world apart / Turns out you’d been wrecking it from the start.”
“Summer of Love” channels a bunch of Tuttle’s country-rock forebears with warm, chiming guitar chords and an inspirational but cautious lyrical message. She declares, “I don’t wanna give up / On the Summer of Love,” before pleading in the bridge, “Baby, baby / Show me something to believe in.”
So Long Little Miss Sunshine isn’t all slick Nashville production, though. “Everything Burns” opens the record with complex, minor-key bluegrass guitar picking, dark and urgent. It’s actually quite similar to her previous album, City of Gold’s opener, “El Dorado”. While that was a historical tale of the California Gold Rush, “Everything Burns” is much more contemporary. “See the arsonist standing in the burning sun / With the stars and stripes and the tommy gun / I wonder how long he can make this last?” It continues in this vein throughout, oblique enough for inattentive listeners to ignore, but quite pointed nevertheless.
“Rosalee” is the latest in a string of Tuttle’s murder ballads. This one is the story of a woman trying to get away with killing a lawman. Rosalee, it turns out, was just defending herself, but “What if they found out just who fired the gun / Rosalee, you better run.” It’s a dark song, but it’s also fast-paced and entertaining.
On the more positive side, there’s the ebullient “Oasis”, which is a loving ode to a new relationship. With Secor on backing vocals and knowing the song is likely about him, the track is even more effective. Conversely, the rocking “Old Me” sounds like a breakup song at first. The first verse is full of lines that sound like ways of ditching your ex. The chorus reveals, though, that Tuttle is attempting to leave her negative feelings and inclinations to be a people pleaser behind.
So Long Little Miss Sunshine closes out, as the two Golden Highway records did, with an autobiographical self-reflection. Unlike the warmly nostalgic “Grass Valley” and the too syrupy “The First Time I Fell in Love”, “The Story of My So-Called Life” takes a more wide-angle view. Tuttle’s lyrics are rapid-fire, covering a lot of personal ground very quickly in the verses. The refrain, though, is a big, catchy singalong. The chorus is so catchy, in fact, that it may take listeners a few times through the song to realize how much personal information Tuttle is including in the three verses.
Despite the first impression of “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark”, the full So Long Little Miss Sunshine is very much Molly Tuttle being herself and doing her own thing. It’s not entirely bluegrass this time around, which could bother some fans. She’s stretching her sound mildly and clearly enjoying the process. The result is an excellent written, impeccably performed, highly entertaining album.