Whatever you’re expecting from Karen Jonas’ new album The Restless, don’t get comfortable. This is a mature album written by someone who has fully embraced their power: lyrically, musically, as an artist, as a person. Jonas has always known how to turn a pen — in prepping for this review, I gave a spin of her previous album The Southwest Sky and Other Dreams, a riotously funny nod to Red Dirt. That’s not what The Restless is: it’s a commanding performance of confident experimentation.
The sound here could best be described as indie rock-icana. Jonas and her sharpshooter band navigate complex arrangements with aplomb, serving sparkly steel guitar and muscular grooves alongside songs that contemplate a failed affair in a small town, an epic embrace of true love amidst European finery — and, on “That’s Not My Dream Couch” — a winking manifesto of getting what you want, and refusing to settle for less.
It is also one of the most “horny on main” albums I’ve heard in a while. Jonas embraces and celebrates her sensuality in a refreshingly frank manner — she’s not coy or an attempt to build a shocking persona, just a statement of fact that her desires are a matter of fact and need to be taken seriously. At the risk of spilling even more ink about women in country and Americana, I think there’s a lot to be said about how women (especially cis and straight — not to make assumptions about Jonas) address sex in their writing. When a song like Ashley McBryde’s “One Night Standards” can generate much pearl-clutching in the year of our lord 2020 AD, songs like Jonas’ “Lay Me Down” and “Paris Breeze” feel downright revolutionary.
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