"Open Book" is the debut album by 26 year old country singer/songwriter Kalie Shorr. In the few years preceding this album she had released a few singles and an EP where she gathered some momentum leading up to the release of this album in 2019. I actually only discovered Kalie this year by watching a Country 2 Country virtual gig which I was watching due to Tenille Townes playing. It was a unique gig in the sense that it was being streamed worldwide on you tube and the 5 female country artists playing were socially distanced on stage and took turns playing their songs. For me that night Tenille and Kalie were the stand outs and that is how I started to get into Kalie's music.
It is quite intreging looking at both Tenille and Kalie who are of similar age and also both having released their debut albums in the last few years. Also both are country artists who have fantastic range in their voices. But when you look at their albums and what they are writing about that really is where the similarity ends. Tenille's album although dealing with some sad topics is mainly full of hope and joy. While Kalie really seems to have had a hard time and is dealing with these hard times by putting a pen to paper and taking it out through her music.
"Open Book" is a terrific album on a number of levels. I am not often a lyrics person and more often than not it's because I don't really understand what artists are talking about and the deep meaning behind songs. But here Kalie is just so up front, honest and straight to the point in her lyrics it's not only easy to relate to them but it's easy to understand them. One of my favourite lyrics in the album is on the opening track "Too much to say" where she sings "I've got more unclaimed baggage than an airport lost and found, if no-one picks it up it just goes round and round and round". This is not only a brilliant analogy but also something everyone experiences at one point or another in their life. Mental health struggles are real and if you don't talk about it, it will just keep doing loops round your head until you do.
As well as mental struggles being a theme throughout the lyrics in the album, Kalie also outlines the reasons for those struggles too with things like drinking whiskey and smoking and having been played by ex-boyfriends. You don't need a degree in music to work out what the song "FU Forever" is about. I do wonder if that song may shoot her in the foot as it is basically swearing. But at the same time now Taylor Swift is swearing in albums it kind of opens up the floodgates for it just being acceptable.
So lyrically this album is brilliant but that's not the only thing about this album that makes it great. On another level, musically it is great too. Right from the opening track where a mouth organ comes in, in the opening notes, it pulls you in to the album instantly. "The World Keeps Spinning" has this amazing slow marching drum beat. While "Gatsby" has this great moment which means the song was made for live performance. When it gets to later in the song and Kalie sings "When I get up, I get down, I take my meds and I hit the town". It's just one of those moments which is perfect for audience participation as its a singalong moment. For me though the biggest highlight comes in "Lullaby" in the chorus where Shorr's vocals just seem to glide and soar. It's such a memorable and magical moment I just want to play the track again and again.
Overall Shorr may have gone through many hoops and challenges in her personal life leading up to making this record. But through channelling all these hard times into her record and combining it with her amazing song writing ability, she has produced a record which has succeeded on so many levels. At the time of writing (December 2020) she has now released an extended version of the album. Interestingly and unconventionally she has not added extra songs on to the end of the album but mixed them into the rest of the songs on the album. Not heard of this being done before and not sure how I feel about it but the new tracks are good too.
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