It could be worse. Her name could be Rose.
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[6.14]
Alfred Soto: Ashley Monroe is one-third of country supergroup Pistol Annies, along with country superstar Miranda Lambert and if-only Angaleena Presley. Although she only took lead on Hell on Heels‘ “Beige,” she shared songwriting credit on three Lambert songs and contributed to four group numbers. She also boasts a credit on Lambert’s piledriving “Me and My Cigarettes” and “Heart Like Mine” from 2009’s Revolution. On Like a Rose, her first solo album since surviving major label chicanery, she boasts a dulcet tenor that neither pushes its limits nor is mesmerized by its prettiness. It often isn’t enough. A couple of times I primed myself for Lambert and Presley’s intrusions. But thanks to steel guitar lick here and subtle accordion there, Monroe can project self-reliance without being smug about it; it’s easy to imagine her in that diner with the cup of coffee. It’s a help too that, like “Automatic,” the title conceit is a surefire, as Alan Jackson and Lucinda Williams proved.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Adding “smelling” would have wrecked the meter. It also would’ve implied a wonderless luck. Monroe holds the miracle close, draping herself in gentle picking and almost-bashful male backing vocals. As this sounds rather trad, I would’ve liked to see the rose developed as a metaphor, but perhaps that would betray a distance she’s not willing to concede.
[5]
Iain Mew: “Heaven only knows how I came out like a rose” she sings, which would be fine, except that the song elaborates just as little on the outcome as how she got there. In the present tense she’s in a diner, coffee in hand, still waiting on a bus to heaven only knows where. Which might be the idea, but there’s nothing to latch onto in a list of hardships with little detail on how they affected her and no real pay-off. It’s all a bit frustrating, which is a pity because voice and arrangement are both very likeable.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: Only the first verse properly gives the impression that there’s something unpleasant from which she emerged sweet-smelling; the rest suggests that she just emerged as a rose might have bloomed. I’m fine with the simile not entirely being fulfilled by the supporting lines, but once you break the rest of the song down, you realise that as nice as Monroe’s voice is, it’s the winsome steel guitar that’s the track’s sweetest sound.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Her voice is crystalline, small and elegant. The restraint on both the examples in the body of the song, and the chorus itself, suggest a hard-won wisdom instead of a fronting swagger.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: I’m caught between the nostalgia drag of the nylon-stringed descending riff in the baritone scale (is that a bajo sexto?) and the unseemly self-description of the title image.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Too genteel to be smug, thankfully, but also for the backstory to carry much weight.
[7]