Carter Faith, one of country music’s newest and most promising voices, invited listeners to the magical wonderland she has dubbed “Cherry Valley” on Friday in the form of her debut studio album.
The project’s 15 songs live in the album’s fictional setting of Cherry Valley, but the experiences are each her own that she has cherry-picked specifically for this record.
“I would write songs, and some of them would live in Cherry Valley,” Faith said in a Rolling Stones interview. “And some of them didn’t. It was just this fantastical dreamland that I created in my head, and I wanted my songs to live in that world too. I love the drama. I wanted them all to feel like they could fit in that very weird, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ world.”
“Cherry Valley” roots this mystical feeling well, and it feels like dissociation in album form.
Our tour of Faith’s fantasyland kicks off with the title track, which paints Cherry Valley as a paradise in both setting and season of life. When Faith was with whom we can presume to be a former lover, she felt simultaneously on top of the world and at the bottom of a mountain in Cherry Valley.
With the song’s production and Faith’s timeless vocals, it feels as if we, as the listeners, are taken to the dreamlike place with her for the rest of the record.
“Sex, Drugs, & Country Music” follows the title track with the cheeky line, “I kiss and told ‘til the word got out / That I could tie a cherry stem with my mouth.” The rest of the song is classic country tuning and edgy lyrics that I am almost certain would be banned if this song were ever shipped to country radio. The song reminds me heavily of Kacey Musgraves’s music, with its traditional sound and humorous tone.
And that Musgraves-reminiscent vibe is present on other songs throughout the record — like on the borderline-sacreligious “Grudge.” When “If I were a good Christian woman like you, I’d probably forgive / But I’m pretty sure that even Jesus thinks that you’re a (expletive removed),” is a lyric, you don’t know whether to gasp or laugh. I did both.
The craziness of “Cherry Valley” does not stop there, though. And the album does have a collection of potential-No. 1 hits with inoffensive yet memorable lyrics and bold, stringed instrumentation.
“Arrows (Die For That Man)” takes infatuation to intense levels where Faith claims she is willing to lay down her life for a lover. “Bar Star” sees our narrator describe her destructive type in men and “Betty” clocks the songstress voicing jealousy and taking the crazy to “I’m gonna drive by her house to see if you’re there” levels.
But make no mistake, “Cherry Valley” grows out of its obsessive and insane moments that can follow a breakup, and it blooms into mature, reflective tracks about self-worth and the hope of falling in love again on the final third of the album.
“Sails,” my personal favorite song on the record, suggests that listeners adjust their perspective of life when the wind blows. “If you can’t move mountains, grab your shovel and your pail / You can’t control the wind, but you can adjust your sails,” Faith sings at the end of the chorus.
“So I Sing” discusses the impact musical healing has had on Faith’s life.
“Changed” is what my friend called “very ‘For Good’ from ‘Wicked’-coded.” And my friend was rather correct, as the song discusses we can be “forever changed” by the people we love only temporarily.
We leave “Cherry Valley” with “Still A Lover” — an ethereal, vintage-sounding reminder that even though hearts can sometimes be easy to break, there is still a core inside that oozes love from the cracks.
I was never bored on my journey through “Cherry Valley.” Every song, individually, is a masterpiece in its own light, but, as a whole project, I am reminded that even though I may find myself vengeful, self-destructive or even delusional at times, I am still a lover at heart.
