Amanda Shires has always been something of a shapeshifter – fiddle in one hand, razor-edged pen in the other, sliding effortlessly between Americana, alt-country, and folk-rock. But on her new record, Nobody’s Girl, she isn’t shifting. She’s stripping. Peeling away. Burning down the façade

After a long couple of years, Shires, one quarter of The Highwomen (with Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris and Brandi Carlisle), is ready to reemerge. Her grandmother and, more recently, her father, died. There have been moments of crying unexpectedly in the strangest of places, and moments of feeling so numb she could no longer feel her body

There’s also, of course, her divorce from singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, which was initiated in late 2023 and finalised earlier this year. The divorce, after 10 years of marriage, and the ensuing emotional fallout and period of personal growth and regrowth following it, is the subject of Nobody’s Girl

This is not just another ‘divorce album.’ It’s a document of survival written in lowercase scars, whispered prayers, and occasional screams

Crawling from the wreckage

What happens when the story of your life gets co-opted – rewritten by someone else, turned into their mythology while you’re left bleeding backstage? Shires tackles that exact tension

From the opening moments of Invocation – a hushed, ritualistic swell of piano and fiddle – you know you’re entering sacred, haunted territory. A Way It Goes opens the wound with brutal imagery: “I could show you a real shattering / a bird flown into a glass window collapsing.” The kind of line that stops you cold. Then she digs deeper with The Details, where she practically spits the line about a partner “using me and cashing in on our marriage.” Ouch. It’s blunt, it’s messy, it’s real, and it’s easily the sharpest knife in the drawer. It’s an accusation set to melody. Lately drifts in a fog of limbo: not healed, not destroyed, just existing. It’s heartbreak’s purgatory, and it feels uncomfortably familiar

Shires doesn’t give us cathartic fireworks. Instead, she offers candlelight and ash, the aftermath rather than the explosion

The sound of holding it together

Lawrence Rothman’s production plays it cool – maybe too cool at times. Most of the songs sit in a dusky palette of pianos, strings, and atmosphere. That restraint works: it lets the lyrics do the heavy lifting, putting Shires’ fragile-yet-piercing voice right at the centre

Still, she throws a few curveballs. Lose It for a While flirts with psych-rock haze. Piece of Mind grinds into something fuzzier, louder, dirtier. Those moments are jolts of electricity in an otherwise slow-burning room

But let’s be honest: this is not the album you blast at a party. It’s the one you put on at 2 a.m., alone in the kitchen, staring at the fridge light while trying not to text your ex. Pain isn’t flashy. It lingers in the same key, day after day, until slowly (maybe) it lifts

Nobody’s Girl doesn’t play nice. It doesn’t give you easy empowerment anthems or “moving on” fireworks. Instead, it sits in the ache, in the blur of aftershocks

And that’s what makes it powerful. Shires is reclaiming her narrative, refusing to let it be repackaged or sanitised. She’s not a supporting character in someone else’s saga anymore. She’s the voice on the record

Nobody’s Girl is an album of survival, not triumph. A collection of small, stubborn breaths. Not perfect, but unforgettable