Album Review – Rachel Brooke’s “The One’s For You”
Traditional Country (#510) and Classic Country (#510.1) on the Country DDS. AI = “Clean”
Rachel Brooke already has a stacked catalog of badass country and Gothic roots albums that have made her outright revered by a fervent assembly of fans. But she has never been more country, her voice has never been showcased so exquisitely, her songwriting has never been so sharp and clever, and the music has never been so complimentary as it is on her new album This One’s For You. That’s not to sell any other title from her past short. That’s to compliment on how she career’d out on this one.
Heretofore, Rachel Brooke has mostly been know for her songs with a dour disposition, delivered with a voice that conveys more pain per square inch and decibel than just about any other singer out there. Truly, whenever you’re discussing the most heartbreaking, emotive singers in country music, Rachel Brooke should be in that conversation. But on This One’s For You, it’s how she works humor into the equation that makes the listening experience that much more enrapturing.
Don’t take that to mean there isn’t a darkness to this new album. Far from it. But along with parading out a strong lineup of straight ahead traditional country tearjerkers like “The North Star,” “Currently The Fool,” and “The One Who Got Away,” it’s through Rachel Brooke’s humorous moments where she reveals some the darkest and bleakest stanzas of her career.
The genius of This One’s For You is how Rachel Brooke starts with a foundation very traditional country musical tones, and verses hewn from entertaining rural parlance, including delivered in talk singing just like the oldtimers. Then in certain songs, she throws down these exquisitely insightful and brutally true observations about the dystopian technological abyss we’re all staring into. On their face, these bouts of modern perspective are stridently anachronistic set against the classic country background. But this is what gives these moments a sharpness and power.
“The Ballad of Bald Hill” is about being stuck in a dead end town and trying to chase your dreams—a rather common theme for a country song until Rachel Brooke interjects, “How am I supposed to pay my dues when I’m getting paid in likes and views? Now how is that a substitute for a front row seat? … And a young woman’s beauty only lasts so long, but as the years go by, I write better songs.”
The entire song “The Real Pretender” is a kiss off to cosplay cowboys, and the counterintuitive, anti-meritocratic nature of the music business. The song “This One’s For You” is super traditional country, taking advantage of Rachel’s Hank Williams influence and her strong yodel. Once again the setting is super rural and country, until Rachel Brooke goes off,
“And now they’re trading human beings for songs written by machines. That’s like trading country gold for brass … There ain’t nothing about us that’s artificial. So I send my regards to that machine, raise my hands up high, and prompt AI to kiss my ass.”
Sometimes musicians talking so much shop can be a vibe kill. But for Rachel Brooke, her kiss-off, no f-cks given, bold and brutally honest assessments are both refreshing, and devilishly entertaining. And in many respects, it doesn’t really matter what Rachel Brooke is singing about, only that she is singing. Her voice is both like a warm and soft place you never want to leave, and a deep wellspring of engulfing emotion that buries you in immense feeling.
There is some country cliché on this album, like the song “Currently The Fool.” But true country is inherently cliché. Perhaps one of the best songs on the album is the super clever “When Dube Gets The Crud,” leaning into the whole cornpone nature of country music. Yet it’s the way Rachel Brooke weaves such smart, relevant, and important social commentary seamlessly in with silly agrarian notions that makes This One’s For You something exceptional-feeling.
8.4/10
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Stream This One’s For You /// Purchase on CD/Vinyl