Ever since her triumphant (and still considered by many to be the best) break out festival appearance at London’s C2C festival in 2018 the UK has been like a second home for Ashley McBryde. We’ve championed her talent, her warmth and her wit and watched as America slowly caught on to what we saw from the get-go: which is a Country music artist, a little Rock around the edges, who isn’t afraid to bare her soul, speak from the heart and slap you in the face if you deserve it. McBryde’s fourth album, ‘The Devil I Know’ does all those things in equal measure.
Following hot on the heels of last year’s ‘Lindeville’ concept album, ‘The Devil I Know’ arrives with a shared genealogy and origin story in terms of where some of the songs come from. It features McBryde’s usual team of writers and collaborators such as Nicolette Hayford, Connie Harrington and Aaron Raitiere alongside seasoned writers and artists like Sean McConnell and Lainey Wilson. Throw talented writers like Travis Meadows, Autumn McEntire, Jessi Alexander and Hillary Lindsey into the mix and you’ve got the makings of an awesome chilli!
McBryde has never been afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve or write about personal and painful things, it’s one of the reasons why we think she is one of the best artists to emerge in Country music in the last decade. ‘Bible and a .44,’ Girl Goin’ Nowhere’ and ‘Stone’ are prime examples of stunning songs that allow you a peak behind McBryde’s curtain and ‘The Devil I Know’ is no exception. McBryde manages to mix commercial melody and bluegrass-tinged acoustic joy with lyrical meaning and still come up with something that would dominate on the radio too.
‘The Devil I Know’ is interestingly sequenced and features a number of songs paired together with similar themes. It opens with the terrific ‘Made For This,’ an honest, warts-and-all look at the life on the road and in the wider music industry. McBryde de-mystifies the glamour and boils it down to a life of ‘adderall and alcohol’ and big breaks that stay, frustratingly, out of reach. It’s a punchy, rock leaning number with a great guitar solo and ‘concert opener’ pretensions. Its commercial partner on this album would be ‘Women Ain’t Whiskey’, a track we first heard McBryde play ar the C2C festival in London back in March 2022. This is a moody, atmospheric song that echoes an artist like Lady A. It builds towards an incredibly catchy chorus as McBryde scorns the person treating her like something you can just pick up and put down again at will. The chugging guitars and expansive production make this track one of the best on the album and an obvious contender for the radio.
Elsewhere, McBryde really digs into her foibles and failings with some honest, raw and brave writing. ‘Learn to Lie’ and ‘The Devil I Know’ are part of a mid-album double whammy that expose a lot of her self-doubts and fears. The former sees her singing about her mother’s depression and her father ‘fogging up the windows of an ’89 Sable’. (a topic she has already touched upon in ‘Martha Divine’) It’s a heavyweight song that benefits from some deft production and has a cracking extended guitar outro that will slay live as the song builds to it’s big finale. ‘The Devil I Know’, meanwhile, is a fascinatingly produced, unique song that starts off in acoustic mode before the drums and guitars come crashing in as McBryde, who touches upon her raising again, comes to realise that she is just as flawed and as contrary as all of us. An inventive structure makes this track a real immersive listen as McBryde pushes the boundaries of commercial Country music in the same way that someone like Eric Church does.
Then we have the pairing of ‘Light on in the Kitchen’ and ‘Single at the Same Time.’ Here McBryde goes for a wistful feel with a real edge of world weary wisdom. ‘Light on in the Kitchen’, the early focus track, is steadily making its way up the Billboard charts. It’s a serious, heavy song full of ‘kitchen table wisdom’ and sayings from your Grandma. ‘Never back up further than you have to,’ is one such pearl whilst ‘when you make friends always be colour blind,’ is another. A melodic ballad, ‘Light on in the Kitchen’ is the equivalent of receiving a warm hug and hot cup of tea – it’s melodic, grown up Country music for grown up people with grown up feelings. ‘Single at the Same Time,’ meanwhile, is an introspective, quiet song that finds McBryde ruminating on missed opportunities and what might have beens. Gentle, plaintive melodies draw you into the narrative of this song which does nothing flashy or brash, it just works a quiet kind of magic and lets you come to it in its own time.
There’s a double pairing couple of songs about bars on ‘The Devil I Know’ too. ‘The Coldest Beer in Town’ is a breezy, melodic number about heartache and coming to the realisation that not everything has to be great all the time. It barrels along with lighter vibes and a kind of Keith Urban-esque banjo line whilst ”Cool Little Bars’ might well be this album’s hidden gem of a song. A kind of rural Appalachian campfire vibe is established quite quickly before the song song breaks out, all awash in harmonica and acoustic fretboard action! Some stripped back drums propel ‘Cool Little Bars’ forward in a style that we can see being well worth adding into the live set.
The album closes with another pairing of songs that are thematically linked. This time alcohol is the subject under discussion.’Blackout Betty’ is a messy, fall-down drunk tale of excess and self destruction as McBryde leans into that Southern Rock side of herself that we’ve seen on songs like ‘Voodoo Doll’ and ‘Southern Babylon.’ Dirty guitars and huge drums dominate each explosive chorus as McBryde runs through the litany of things that happen to her when she drinks. Some awesome Led Zeppelin-esque riffage sees us through to the end of the song and then ‘6th of October’ closes the album down with a punch to the gut that is hard to recover from at first. The song begins with the line, ‘I threw up this morning… and slept in my van.’ It’s a lighter, melodic track with a restrained and harmonious chorus that belies the weighty subject matter it is dealing with, which you don’t really understand until the song comes to its sudden and impactful end. And once more the truths and the scar tissue that Ashley McBryde isn’t afraid to sing about are on display again.
‘The Devil I Know’ contains some of Ashley McBryde’s finest work and some of her most open and honest songwriting too. It’s also jam-packed with melody and some honest-to-goodness Country music. McBryde’s ability to bare her soul on what are essentially open wounds in song form is a rare gift and when you add in her knack of being able to produce a killer chorus and some crazy guitar work too, you’ve pretty much got a genre-defining artist on your hands. She can do no wrong.
Tracklist: 1. Made for This 2. Coldest Beer in Town 3. Light on in the Kitchen 4. Women Ain’t Whiskey 5. Learned to Lie 6. The Devil I Know 7. Single at the Same Time 8. Cool Little Bars 9. Whiskey and Country Music 10. Blackout Betty 11. 6th of October Release Date: September 8th Record Label: Warner Music Nashville Buy ‘The Devil I Know’ now.
This article contains an affiliate link. Purchases through this link may result in us earning a commission.
