Lady for Sale

With 2022s immediately iconic Lady for Sale, Lola Kirke completes her transformation from buzzed-about film and TV darling to charismatic country-pop chanteuse. The album follows her engaging 2018 debut, Heart Head West, which showcased her dusky and noirish singer/songwriter brand of indie country-rock. Working with instrumentalist/producer Austin Jenkins (White Denim, Leon Bridges), Kirke raises the bar on Lady for Sale, crafting empowered, retro-leaning songs that feel like the kind of polished country-pop artists like Dolly Parton and Juice Newton excelled at in the 1980s. Imagine a soundtrack to a film that somehow combines the saucy feminist swagger of 9 to 5 with the "can-do" business skirt and running shoes attitude of Working Girl, and youll get a sense of the clever, spirited vibe Kirke conjures on Lady for Sale. Tracks like "If I Win" and "Pink Sky" are catchy anthems that frame her warm, whisky-and-lollipop voice with hyper-colored synths, twangy electric guitars, and a mix of real and analog percussion. Elsewhere, cuts like "Stay Drunk" and "Fall in Love Again" evoke the shimmering, dancing-in-the-sunset style of Fleetwood Mac. While Lady for Sale sounds like Nashville in the 80s, Kirke is no tumbleweed. Shes a city girl (born in London and raised in New York) and brings a wry, knowing maturity to the album that feels both genuine and artfully conceptual. She has an uncanny knack for tweaking country tropes with a postmodern pop sensibility, as on the giddy "Better Than Any Drug," a song that enthusiastically sounds like Madonnas "Borderline" if redone by Crystal Gayle. Lady for Sale bubbles over with these kinds of inspired genre-mashing moments, which are made all the more potent by Kirkes swaggering, palpable sense of fun. ~ Matt Collar