Album Review – Midland’s “Barely Blue”

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#510.7 (Classic California country) and #570.1 (folk-inspired Americana) on the Country DDS

Holy yacht rock, Batman. Here we are in a moment in country music custom made for the neotraditional sounds of Midland, and here they are invoking the era in music when folk rock turned into mom rock on the easy listening station. Why risk a psychotic episode while on Ambien when you could simply put this on soft in the background and drift into comatose? It’s not as much “bad” as it is “blah.” But it’s still a bit of a disappointment from one of the few major label bands that previously wasn’t afraid of twang and traditional sounds.

Midland and their manufactured backstory of being a honky tonk band from Texas has always been polarizing among actual country fans, but their music was always the saving grace. Whether you thought they were the country music version of the Monkees or not, they found a cool ’70s-’90s country sound with a hint of the Eagles, and perfected it nicely with the help of producers and songwriters Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne.

But similar to the recent music from Lainey Wilson and Jon Pardi, here is another mainstream traditionalist that has decided to switch gears right when the appeal for their established sound is at its peak. For Midland this comes in the form of mostly writing their own material, and working with producer Dave Cobb on a significantly softer and more stripped-back approach. It still has a vintage, faraway feel like their previous stuff. But there’s none of that honky tonk sweat or grit, and the cleverness in the songwriting just isn’t there like before.

Before we go any further, let’s make sure to give credit where credit is do, because this is one of those albums where a lot of criticisms can be drawn from it, but it’s still more good than bad. What Midland does well on this album is set an immersive mood in sort of an early ’80s desert rock landscape. This album shepherds you off to a pastel-colored adobe motor inn somewhere in the Southwest, where you walk to the restaurant across the street shaped like a sombrero while bathed in neon blue light, and make eyes with the pretty waitress over a plate of hard-shelled tacos.

You can tell there was a specific vibe Midland wanted to set with Barely Blue, and they definitely accomplish this. The question is why this vibe, and why now? You don’t want to make the same album over and over again, and perhaps Midland thinks they’re moving slightly ahead in the timeline before everyone else—that this is where retro country is going.


A few of the songs from the album would work fine as standard album cuts. The opening song “Lucky Sometimes” is catchy enough with its Supertramp “Long Way Home”-sounding intro. “Old Fashioned Feeling” is perhaps the greatest example of capturing the desired mood they look set with the guitar tones and an understated approach. The writing of “Vegas” feels quite dated due to being inspired by a marketing campaign that was launched way back in 2003, but the steel guitar and overall mood do result in some fetching listening moments.

But even the people you see praising this album are remarking about how short it feels. Sure, the eight song, 28-minute run time is primarily to blame. But you get this short-changed sense when listening because there’s just not a lot of substance or body behind the music. It’s so whispy, with all the sharp edges buffed out until there’s nothing for your mind or ears to grab onto and hold. There’s no real hooks, and no real hit in the 8-song lot. It’s like an album of B-sides.

Your instinct might be to blame producer Dave Cobb for the outcome here. There is also a lack of good separation in the signals, and the way the voices are blended here adds to the ambiguity of the listening experience. But again, you feel like the album accomplishes what it sets out to do sonically. It’s just the songs lack the punch they need to put them in the front of your attention span. There isn’t a song in the lot that captures any up-tempo energy. The songs just kind of drift by listlessly with little presence.

Barely Blue feels very similar to the fate of the Kacey Musgraves album Star-Crossed. It’s pretty evident now that we were wrong about Shane McAnally the whole time through the 2010s. We saw him affiliated with those Sam Hunt records and cast him off as completely evil. But you can tell by his absence from both Musgraves and now Midland that he was the secret ingredient that made these bands work, and helped carve out a space in the mainstream for a more traditional sound and approach.

It bears repeating, underscoring, and emphasizing emphatically that Midland’s Barely Blue is one of those albums that deserves a lot of criticism, but overall isn’t really bad. It just misses the mark—or in this case, sets the wrong mark to aim at. If any of these individual songs came on your radio or the playlist you’re listening to, you wouldn’t be offended. You may just not notice them at all. They’re unremarkable.

The current neotraditional moment in country music is not going to last forever. These things revolve in cycles. And perhaps with so many of the mainstream neotraditionalists abandoning it prematurely, it’s hastening this era’s departure. Midland had an opportunity to seize momentum here and make the most of it. Instead, they released an album of fleeting songs that just drift by.

6/10

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