India Ramey Channels Classic Country Sounds While Balancing Grit and Wit on ‘Villain Era’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

On her latest effort, Villain Era, India Ramey digs deep into the past for influences and lands on an inspired mix of Wanda Jackson and Johnny Cash. To be fair, you’d be hard-pressed to find a cooler mix than the Queen of Rockabilly and the Man in Black for inspiration. 

The album opener, “We Ride at Dawn,” starts things off strong with a clarion call for women to take action and is a song cloaked in a story about seeking revenge on bandits who came to town. Between the lines, however, it’s a song about women justifiably enraged and seeking revenge against men who strip them of their bodily autonomy. And it segues perfectly into the title track, with Ramey embracing her “villain era,” and opting out of being the perpetual people pleaser, (“Looks like I’ve gone and grown a spine/And if that makes me the outlaw/In your plot line/I’ll wear that black hat with pride”). The song, complete with a twanging telecaster and fiddle, sounds like it could have come off any ‘70s era Waylon album. 

“Scattered and Smothered” plays as a tongue-in-cheek ode to late-night Waffle House decompression, but it’s on “Six Feet Deep” where she truly showcases her range – both vocally and stylistically – slipping into a dramatic ballad about finding peace from heartbreak once she’s gone. But just as quickly, she pivots back to humor with the charmingly funny “Crying in my Lingerie,” complete with a classic country sound. 

Elsewhere, “Nobody’s Coming,” kicking off with trumpets, is one of the album’s darkest moments but is also beautifully done, with her voice seeming to connote both vulnerability and resilience at once. The album closes on the “Red Red Roses,” complete with twangy guitars and pedal steel that comes off like a traditional classic Music Row tune, both lyrically and stylistically, and “Ghost Town,” a song that sounds like it’s soundtracking an old Spaghetti Western. 

The album effortlessly vacillates between moments of despair and humor, making it that much more compelling. Villain Era ultimately thrives on its balance of grit and wit, blending outlaw country and honky tonk tradition with sharp, modern defiance into a record that feels both timeless and pointedly current.