Amanda Shires - Take It Like A Man (2022)

GRAMMY and Americana Award-winning singer/songwriter and violinist, Amanda Shires, has pushed the reset button with Take It Like a Man, a record that is so unlike anything she has ever recorded that you would be tempted to think it was her debut album instead of her seventh. Shires, who also plays in The Highwomen, worked with producer Lawrence Rothman (Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon) to make a fearless confessional, showing the world what turning 40 looks like in 10 emotionally raw tracks.

Amanda Shires does not fit comfortably into any one genre—flirting with country, folk, rock and pop. She's also not looking to make anyone else comfortable. On her eighth album, Shires, the wife of Americana superstar Jason Isbell, explores the good, the bad and the ugly of marriage: in particular, her own. "There's nothing left to fix …You can say it's all my fault/ We just couldn't get all along / And so you know, I'll say, 'I don't know'/ But no one's going to be asking me," she sings on the what-if ballad "Fault Lines." Even Shires has admitted, "I second-guessed myself a lot by keeping 'Fault Lines' on the record … but my intentions were to tell the truth the best that I could from the place that I was in." That "place" was the lockdown days of the pandemic. "We were having problems before Covid, and then during Covid there was a lot of pressure…," she has said. For one thing, she became resentful of a greater burden of domestic responsibility. "Jason's Covid talent was getting better at the guitar, playing it eight hours a day. What was my Covid talent? It was setting boundaries. I allowed myself to take up more space in my own life," she's said. On the title track, she pushes the natural, beautiful wavering of her voice for a metaphor with birds. "Like a common loon I started hearing birds … Warblers and wrens, hymn at my throat/ Shook and quivering, I could have crowed," she sings, fluttering but always sounding strong. "I know the cost of flight is landing/ And I know I could take it like a man." She ends with a twist: "Take it like Amanda." She also stands her ground on the big and dramatic "Hawk for the Dove," her fiddle every bit as searing as Isbell's guitar: "I'm coming for you like the hawk for the dove." Guitar, meanwhile, sounds like her aching duet partner on the ballad "Don't Be Alarmed." Brittney Spencer and Maren Morris—one of Shires' partners in the country supergroup the Highwomen—back her up on the slinky "Bad Behavior." Mischievous "Here He Comes" employs Attractions-like keys, while "Lonely At Night" applies Dusty In Memphis magic, with a back-up assist by Spencer. Morris pops up again on the Roy Orbison-style ballad "Empty Cups": "Maybe I was asking for a little too much/ To keep the newness from wearing off/ For every start there's gonna be a stop." That theme—about how finding true love means you'll never have that first spark again—returns on the heartbreaking "Everything Has Its Time." "There was a time when it was hard to say goodnight … now we just walk through the door, turn out the light, and go to bed," Shires sings, almost in mourning. Still, this is not a break-up record. As Shires has said of herself and Isbell, "What we decided is that we're happiest if we work on ourselves. Then we have more to offer each other."

Tracklist
1. Hawk For The Dove (3:47)
2. Take It Like A Man (4:31)
3. Empty Cups (3:59)
4. Don't Be Alarmed (3:51)
5. Fault Lines (2:56)
6. Here He Comes (3:29)
7. Bad Behavior (3:37)
8. Stupid Love (3:17)
9. Lonely At Night (4:12)
10. Everything Has Its Time (3:33)