Artist:     Nobody’s Girl

Album:     Nobody’s Girl

Label:     Lucky Hound Music

Release Date:     7.30.21

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BUY PHYSICAL

None of the angelic sirens of Nobody’s Girl is missing a brain or a heart or lacking in courage. Referencing the “Wizard of Oz” in the soft, yearning anthem “Kansas” that gracefully opens their charming, modern countrypolitan salon of a self-titled debut LP, the trio of BettySoo, Rebecca Loebe and Grace Pettis go “… drifting down the double yellow line,” full of wanderlust.

Hello, yellow brick road—or blacktopped highway, in this case. Dorothy might have longed for home, but “Kansas” bravely leaves the suffocating, gossipy hamlet where “that high school looked like prison,” never having truly assimilated, driving off alone into complicated adulthood and a new world of possibilities. In some ways, that’s happening here, too, as the three friends abandon the comfort and familiarity of celebrated solo careers to roll the dice on a singer-songwriter merger that dolls up contemporary folk and Americana with a fresh, radio-friendly pop makeover. And yet, for all their sophistication, Nobody’s Girl is as down to earth as they come, blowing bubblegum accessibility in everyone’s faces and daring critics to pop it.

Aside from a faithful, lovingly-rendered cover of Carole King’s wistful classic “So Far Away”—mournful trumpet weeping in the wings, depressed piano staring out the window—and a dustier reading of Eliza Gilkyson’s “Beauty Way,” everything is team-written by Loebe, Pettis and BettySoo, as the buoyant “Rescued,” “Waterline” and a pleading “What’ll I Do” are catchy, heartfelt hits in love with Faith Hill and Trisha Yearwood. Their sweet vocals lead assertively when out on their own but come back to bond and mesh beautifully in sweeping, artfully arranged choruses, the tight, almost sisterly harmonies so clean and pure, especially in the impassioned, sighing protest song “Promised Land,” where they triage with optimism and disappointment in patching up the country’s open wounds.

Eat your heart out, Joan Baez.

—Peter Lindblad