Amanda Shires has been dealing with her fair share of ghosts. Finally emerging from her divorce from Jason Isbell, along with the loss of both her grandmother and father, Nobody’s Girl looks at the wreckage of the last few years. Despite the darkness and desperation, her journey finds her digging out, ready to find the balance between professional life, family life and personal life. There’s no road map guiding her, just a sense of who she is now and how she wants to live.
Charting her course, she is aware of the pitfalls that have led her in directions not necessarily in her best interest. The somber opening to ‘A Way It Goes’ focuses on a rather spare sound of keyboards, drum and bass while Shires admits to the personal struggles that have added to the dark tones of divorce. “I could say it’s a leviathan of lonely/ Hanging around the whole place haunting/ Don’t care if no one ever wants me again.” At least she is out from under the gloom.
While 30 songs were written for Nobody’s Girl, the 13 that made the final cut clearly don’t save Jason Isbell from his share of the blame for the dissolution of their marriage. ‘The Details’ puts him in the line of fire. “He erases the details in our history/ No matter how clear I keep the memories/ He rewrites them so he can sleep.” Not a pretty picture, and one that she might want not to share with her daughter when she gets older.
Moments play out with simple rhythms and sensitive guitars, yet just as often the guitars are cranked up, spitting out supercharged solos. The electric guitar and violin simply seethe on ‘Piece of Mind’, as Shires spits out the first verse and lays it on thick, “If you think I could ever hate you, you’re wrong? But that was a real fucked up way to leave,” before concluding the verse, “Broke everything we built/ And left me there to just deal with it.”
Despite all that, Nobody’s Girl is an album where Shires begins to reclaim her own sense of self-worth. She is a woman who is getting her act back together again, even though, as she admits she is well aware that she had to ‘Lose It For Awhile’. But those days are in the back mirror. Amidst strings that may be just a tad to syrupy, she sings about dating again on ‘Friend Zone’, admitting that “When you’re getting high and watching ‘Tombstone’/ You might be in the friend zone.” Love isn’t part of the equation and she’s okay with that.
Amanda Shires is fine with being Nobody’s Girl. It’s definitely not the life she had planned when she married Jason Isbell, but it’s better than where she ended up as the marriage dissolved. The album is not a call to arms, it’s an acceptance that at the dimming of the day she is in a better place, one where she can live with who she is, and that’s enough.