Elle King – Come Get Your Wife
Weekly Review:
Elle King is the girl your parents warned you to stay away from.
“Tulsa” finds the country singer plotting revenge on a two-timing man. On “Try Jesus,” King seeks a different sort of salvation after many mishaps with men. If the lyrics don’t provide enough clues, King’s cry of “a-freakin’-men” on the chorus spells out her intent.
The next track has been floating around online and coasting at the top of the chart for a couple years. There’s not much subtext to “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home),” because anyone not smiling when the doubletime banjo kicks into the chorus doesn’t have a pulse. This duet between King and Miranda Lambert will be the anthem for all bachelorette parties for the next 30 years, and rightly so.
Similarly, the gnarly blues of “Out Yonder” manages to combine many of these themes into one song. King asks a low-down man “Who’s doin’ lines? Who’s huffin’ glue?” while preaching “Jesus might love ya/but that don’t mean I do.”
Come Get Your Wife has several tender moments as well. Dierks Bentley pops by for “Worth a Shot,” a heartfelt pop song about rekindling lost romance. “Jersey Giant” is a bittersweet bluegrass number from the pen of Tyler Childers. The tender love ballad “Love Go By” closes the album.
On her previous albums, King delivered pretty straightforward hard rock. Come Get Your Wife proves that King can have a career as a country star, if she wants it. – Joel Francis
