Morgan Wade – The Party Is Over

As ever, the results are thrilling. As the project’s title notes, a handful of the songs date back to before Wade signed her major-label deal and have been “recovered” here with all-new versions. Wade’s longtime collaborator and touring bandmate Clint Wells produced the album, finding the right shades to complement Wade’s fearless tales of dangerous attraction, unrequited love, and bad decisions. The album’s title track “The Party Is Over”—one of Wade’s older songs—is a crashing anthem about attraction that lingers long after the intoxicants wear off, while the lead single “East Coast” takes those fixations to an extreme in its depiction of a relationship that pushes someone to the edge. “High in Your Apartment” offers a searing account of a loveless hookup amid a troubled sea of guitar noise, and the album-closing “Hardwood Floor” chronicles a woman’s agonizing struggle to become a mother.

Wade does all of this while moving through musical styles with ease. She sounds perfectly at home on guitar-heavy tunes like twang-punk scorcher “Candy from Strangers” and the stormy grunge number “Songs I Won’t Remember,” but she’s equally capable of delivering tenderness and vulnerability, as with the swirling R&B in “Parking Garage” or acoustic strums of “Stay.” What’s more, she does all of it while sounding like no one else and speaking her mind. The Party Is Over (recovered), which connects Wade’s past and present, shows she hasn’t lost an ounce of her dedication to shining a light into the dark places where the truth hides out.

1. The Party Is Over (3:36)
2. Let Us Down (4:17)
3. East Coast (3:18)
4. Roses (3:32)
5. Left Me Behind (4:55)
6. Candy From Strangers (3:51)
7. Parking Garage (3:56)
8. Songs I Won’t Remember (3:52)
9. High in Your Apartment (5:16)
10. Stay (3:21)
11. Hardwood Floor (3:54)