Lainey Wilson - Whirlwind

• 1 cup of pure country
• ½ cup of Cajun-flavored vocals
• 2 tablespoons of rock, funk or soul
• ¼ teaspoon of homespun charm (store-bought is fine)
• A pinch of sass, to taste
• A dash of wordplay, optional

There is a recipe for the perfect Lainey Wilson song, a formula that when trifled with can either leave one coming back for more or leave a bad taste in the mouth. The star’s newest offering, Whirlwind, is a potluck of it all: tunes that either nourish or simply dissatisfy.

The record starts off just fine with the stinging strings and racing beats of ‘Keep Up With Jones,’ a hat-tipping epic to the legendary George Jones, before causing a John Deere whiplash of genre pride with ‘Country’s Cool Again.’ The album seems to go on like this: for every decent song, a disappointing one follows. With the striking Miranda Lambert-backed ‘Good Horses’ comes the hackneyed ‘Broken Hearts Still Beat’ in hot pursuit. The juvenile 'Whiskey Colored Crayon ' pales next to the eviscerating ‘Devil Don’t Go There’, and so it goes.

It’s not that these lesser numbers are downright bad songs, though. An offering like 'Counting Chickens' is charming; it just so happens to be a little nauseating, too. ‘4X4XU’ is sweet, yet sickeningly so. As Wilson grasps for hooks in many of these songs, they get bogged down in cutesy analogies and hollow platitudes. What results are commercially viable pacifiers with any real artistry having been suckled dry. In the end, a few tunes fall short, lacking the growth that should be evident in an artist’s third record, especially from an entertainer of her caliber.

However, when Whirlwind is good, it’s good. The blustery ‘Bar In Baton Rouge,’ full of bleary-eyes attitude, and the swaggering ‘Ring Finger,’ burning with delicious revenge, make for some pretty bright highlights, with the beautifully encouraging ‘Middle Of It’ likely an album savior for its trademark Wilson wisdom.

Ultimately, the release is a little unremarkable, bland even – just Bell Bottom Country with a bigger budget and now-exhausted tropes – especially from someone being heralded as quite the opposite in country music today. With Whirlwind, the artist has served up something good enough to tithe us over for another two years. Because, in truth, we would likely rather go hungry than not have any Lainey Wilson at all.

6.5/10

Lainey Wilson’s 2024 project, Whirlwind, is available everywhere now via BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville.

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