Album Review: Kelsea Ballerini - 'Patterns'
Kelsea Ballerini finds a design that serves her well on fifth album ‘PATTERNS’.
Ballerini, who turned 31 last month, took conversations with songwriter friends and made them into 15 songs on the contrasts of modern relationships. A decade after debut single ‘Love Me Like You Mean It’, that girl with the high heels and eyelash extensions has grown up and is in self-discovery mode now.
‘PATTERNS’ follows 2022 album ‘Subject to Change’ and last year’s ‘Rolling Up the Welcome Mat’, a 16-minute EP that got a Grammy nod for best country album despite its brevity. While the new record’s title screams in capital letters, it’s a lot more nuanced than that.
“When does it start and when does it end?” Kelsea’s musings on the mobius strip of life and love begin in the title track. She describes herself as a “personality vocalist, conversational”, and you’re immediately in that world, whether it’s the friendly cadence of “I got patterns” or the way she repeats “over and over again”.
Kelsea utilised a female dream-team in songwriting sessions in East Tennessee and the Bahamas. Alysa Vanderheym, a “creative foil” to the shiny side of Ms. Ballerini on recent projects, co-produces the album, and helped with most of the writing, while GRAMMY nominee for Songwriter of the Year Jessie Jo Dillon has credits on two-thirds of the album.
Meanwhile, Hall of Famer Hillary Lindsey and Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild both brought motherly energy and perspective to certain tracks, particularly ‘Sorry Mom’. It feels like Kelsea’s signature, as she apologises for missing Carla’s 58th birthday, and smelling of cigarettes, among other things. Once this battle of the generations was written, it set the vibe for the whole project.
No-one told Kelsea to “be careful” in the writing sessions, which were dubbed “heart camps”. The results take different directions. High-energy bop ‘Baggage’ spends 153 seconds in the air with Kelsea surrendering to love and the many suitcases it comes with, which appear on the album artwork too. It becomes her modern musician on tour story, a nod to her early sound, as she sings “Home is when you’re with me” in one of the verses, and “I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else” in the chorus.
‘WAIT!’ joins ‘Baggage’ as one of the record’s highlights. An energetic interjection, it was penned towards the end of the process to fill a hole in the story of ‘PATTERNS’. It’s the truth of being a woman in the 21st-century, all text conversations and channelling her own Taylor. The album was written with a live sound in mind, and this is a prime example, set to fill the arenas she’s announced in the US. It’s a little like Maisie Peters, who’s been confirmed as a tour opener.
Meanwhile, ‘Nothing Really Matters’ has Sheryl Crow vibes, as thick harmonies on the chorus contrast beautifully with Kelsea’s conversational style over the dreamy music in the verses.
Little moments dot another path: internalised love song ‘First Rodeo’, the romantic and sexy ‘Deep’, and the uncertainty underpinning ‘How Much Do You Love Me?’ where she asks “Would you back away if my jokes weren’t funny?” In the self-affirming ‘Beg For Your Love’, Kelsea channels Lady A’s Hillary Scott by singing: “If you want a chase, I won’t run.”
There’s moments of simplicity too, like the contradicting details woven into solo write ‘Two Things’, when she asks “Are we turning into people we used to know?”, or the visible growth on ‘We Broke Up’. Sure, she admits, “I could take a deep dive in the details”, but there’s no need to overthink things. “It’s as simple as, we broke up.” It may be a “tale as old as time” (her words), but splendidly redone in her own perspective.
‘Cowboys Cry Too’ is the only place the Y chromosome gets a look in. After performing with Kelsea at the ACM Awards, Noah Kahan offers male vulnerability on the issue of toxic masculinity. She had the chorus before reaching out to Noah, who wrote about how you can’t outdrive pain whilst on his huge tour. Its easy chorus - “When he’s showing his skin, letting me in, that’s when he’s toughest to me. I never knew cowboys cry, too” – shines through.
‘I Would, Would You’ explains why you should cling to your friends, regardless of whether the parallel relationships falter or fly. ‘This Time, Last Year’ sheds the skin of last year’s EP, battling through, and starting fresh. Kelsea sings: “I came out on the other side. The devil said hi. Baby, baby, look at me now.” It is a beautiful sentiment before heading into the short coda of ‘Did You Make It Home’.
Inevitable Kacey Musgraves comparisons will emerge - there are elements of ‘star-crossed’ and ‘Deeper Well’ in the sound - but this is Kelsea’s story. She’s a mascot for her own brand of golden.
In ‘PATTERNS’, Kelsea found her place, assessed how she got there, and reaches out to others with her own welcome mat. Her personal growth helped her turn out OK, and it feels cathartic. While she sings “two things can be true”, the recurring contrasts suggest an oversimplification. Thousands of things can be true simultaneously, and one of those truths is, Kelsea rules.
Words by Samuel Draper
