It’s not unusual for a musician to come from a musical family, and Skylar Gregg certainly comes from a musical family. They moved to Nashville (where else?) so her dad (a songwriter) and her mom (a pianist) could pursue their musical paths. Skylar is following her own musical path with the release of two previous albums Walkin’ in the Woods and Time Machine, and with her new album Roses.
Roses is a marriage of soul sounds and country and is aptly described as “Muscle Shoals meets Nashville”. Of the album, Gregg said, “I have spent the past 10 years learning who I am. This record is the realest I have ever been.”
You get a healthy dose of both the Muscle Shoals and Nashville sounds in just the first two songs. “Long Way Back” is an example of the former with soulful vocals, organ, and horns. This would be a great song for a crowded dance floor – whenever a full dance floor becomes a thing again. “Roses” is a beautiful country song with pedal steel, fiddle and poignant lyrics. In this song, she sings about lost lost loved ones and how “roses smell like death to me.” Something about the trill in the vocals in this one brings Dolly Parton to mind.
If you don’t know Gregg personally, you have to take her word that this is the realest she’s been. That’s not real hard to do when you listen to the lyrics. She guides the reader through a minefield of tough topics like regret, death, and abuse. It’s hard to be anything but real when those are the themes you cover.
Not all the themes are heavy and serious, however. The album closes with “Drunk in Nashville,” where she sings about drinking in various places like New York where the bars close at 5 or California where one tiki drink is $14.95. She counters that by saying she only gets drunk in Nashville because at least she knows all the streets by name.
The combination of soul and country throughout the album makes for a pleasant listening experience. On top of that, it shows Gregg’s strength as an artist, whether she’s belting out soulful songs or singing a country ballad.
This album is a solid effort. It may have taken Gregg 10 years to discover the person and the artist that she is, but those 10 years led her to this very profound album. And that’s a good thing because this is a fully-realized project that fuses old and modern sounds with lyrics that make you think.
