“The Architect” by Kacey Musgraves, Saturday, August 3, 2024
Deeper Well is an anthesis to the career trajectory Kacey Musgraves should be on if it follows the progression of her former two albums, Golden Hour and star-crossed. Her latest album is beautiful, dedicated to the path the singer is currently on, which is quite different from her former record. Unlike the previous album, Musgraves opts for stripped-back production and acoustic instrumentation. A hint of her Golden, Texas twang only barely qualifies the singer to remain in the Country genre, rather than moving fully into Folk. On a first listen, the album lacks the hooks of her prior albums, but on a deeper listen, the lyrics fill in what seemed like a musical void. When the listener is reconditioned to the new Musgraves sound, the album takes on its own logic and we realize it's the same Kacey we’ve come to love, even if there are some fundamental differences.
COULD I PRAY IT AWAY? AM I SHAPABLE CLAY? With her more liberal views than her genre of Country music particularly on gender and LGBTQ+ inclusion, Kacey Musgraves’s radio singles often fail to gain Country radio airplay, except her duet with Zach Bryan, last year’s “I Remember Everything,” which is Musgraves’s only number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Kacey doesn’t disappoint fans by aligning with the Bible Belt values on Deeper Well. Songs that deal with non/extra-Biblical spiritualism and astrology pepper the lyrics on the album. It seems that Musgraves is the most confident on Deeper Well in her spiritual experimentation. There is one key difference in Kacey’s path she talks about in the title track, “Deeper Well.” The singer talks about giving up marijuana, the drug she had been outspoken about throughout her career, even famously smoking with country legend and fellow marijuana advocate Willie Nelson. She told People magazine that she’s moved on to psilocybin, which is a “spiritual” drug for her, but as for marijuana she says in “Deeper Well”: “So I'm gettin' rid of the habits that I feel are real good at wastin' my time.”
IS THERE AN ARCHITECT? Kacey Musgraves in a (more) sober state tackles several topics on Deeper Well from death and heaven on “Dinner with Friends” to the healing force she feels from the earth and its minerals on “Green Jade” to the death of a friend possibly sending signals from the grave on “Cardinal.” In today’s song, “The Architect,” Kacey ponders the existence of God. The song starts with the wonder of simple wonders of the world, “Even something as small as an apple / It's simple and somehow complex /Sweet and divine, the perfect design.” She then asks if she can “speak with the architect.” She wonders if the marvelous Grand Canyon got “there because of a flood?” The second verse looks at the speaker of the song. She wonders what is wrong with her, asking “Could I pray it away? Am I shapable clay?” The speaker is asking two fundamental questions, the first of which is asked by the LGBTQ+ community. The speaker is asking if she could pray away her faults or the shortcomings prescribed by a religious order. In the second question, she is asking if it is possible to be malleable to a higher power’s will. The chorus ends the song after a third verse in which the speaker reveals: “I was in a weird place, then I saw the right face / And the stars and the planets lined up.” Musgraves is entering into a discussion of epistemology and by asking about “an architect,” she is harkening back to pre-Second Great Revival times when notions of God were less personal and more theoretical. Musgraves' song leaves the listeners with an agnostic to mystical answer, unlike the evangelical reactionaries to the Deists of the early 19th century. But a wistful ballad questioning the presence of a creator cannot control followers. There’s no risk of hellfire and no common enemy. That’s why the counter-argument: “I know there’s an architect, and he told me that I’m living wrong and so are you” is so popular today. It’s about controlling others rather than contemplative practices.
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