Molly Tuttle’s 2019 album, When You’re Ready, was a masterful excursion into pop-flavored country and bluegrass, the kind of hook-laden and infectious outing that demanded an immediate replay when it ended. In the years since that first listen, I’ve come to hear it as akin to Nanci Griffith’s forays into pop on Storms and Late Night Grande Hotel—an imperfect comparison, but that’s where my mind goes.
The albums and EPs that followed in its wake were solid all, with the weakest being an all-covers set and the strongest being the bluegrass excursions with Golden Highway, a crack backing band that included her brother Kyle and bassist extraordinaire Shelby Means. I also enjoyed the EP they released in 2024, Into the Wild, and not just because she embraced her inner Grace Slick on a wild rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Here, however, she trades Golden Highway for a studio ensemble that includes drummers/percussionists Jay Bellerose and Fred Eltringham, bassist Byron House,“Captain Many Hands” Jay Joyce on an array of instruments, and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, her beau, on banjo, fiddle, harmonica, and harmony vocals.
Produced by Joyce, So Long Little Miss Sunshine lacquers a pop sheen onto what are, at heart, country and bluegrass songs—much as she did on When You’re Ready, in other words. The stylistic shift was apparent on the first single, “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark,” a pop-country tune that sounds somewhat like Faith Hill or Shaina Twain fronting the Heartbreakers; it would have topped the charts back in the 1990s. The album also includes a moody cover of the Icona Pop-Charli XCX hit “I Love It,” which I’d never heard until this morning when, out of curiosity, I pulled it up on YouTube. I’m not sure what to make of it, to be honest, other than this: It’s my least-favorite of the 12 tracks.
Anyway, the album opens with “Everything Burns,” which could well have been written about today’s political landscape despite being written in 2020 about COVID-19. The upbeat “The Highway Knows” shares how all roads leads back to her beloved. “Golden State of Mind” remembers old friends who drifted from her orbit (or her from theirs) not with malice, but love. “Rosalee” could well be a lost Bobby Gentry song, while “Easy”… well, it’s a breezy delight, the kind of tune that takes up residence in the head despite the lyrics being about why a relationship ended—he was stepping out on her.
“Summer of Love” longs to recapture the hopes and dreams that unfurled during the halcyon days of 1967, and matches that wistful yearning to a catchy melody. “Old Me (New Wig)” is a kiss-off not to an ex but her old self; it tackles the same theme as Kelsey Waldon’s “Ghost of Myself,” in some respects, but with a tad more attitude. “Oasis,” for its part, is a travelogue about life and love on tour, while “No Regrets” shares a philosophical view about the missteps and wrong turns we all make and take during our time on Earth.
The 12-song, 45-minute album closes with “The Story of My So-Called Life,” which is not a melodic treatise on all things Angela Chase, Jordan Catalano, and “Brain” Krakow but, rather, an artful “cartwheel back in time” that recaps her life’s journey to date.
In short, as I inferred above, So Long Little Miss Sunshine finds Tuttle navigating similar sonic terrain as When I’m Ready—with the primary difference being that the pop sheen isn’t quite as thick. Too, she’s no longer a 20-something kid. She’s lived and loved, driven down dark roads and, at least for now, is basking in the light. It’s a wonderful album.
The Old Grey Cat 