What makes a good woman? It is a loaded question that contains within it many more questions – not least of which is: who gets to decide?
The Staves, a trio of English sisters, address the concept on their long-awaited third album, filtered through a number of tumultuous years.
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The title track sounds like a brick chipped from the wall of sound, full of retro guitar tones and buttoned-up 1950s pop beats. It struggles with the push and pull of womanhood: “I’m carrying weight, but I know it’s not mine,” they sing, repeating the refrain “I’m a good woman” over and over, culminating in a self-convincing yowl.
It is a defiant opening for an album that could so easily be mistaken as soft. Though their interlocking voices are mostly gentle, The Staves channel their pain and joy into a record that would stare you down and take a hit.
It is flecked with unexpectedly hard sounds: the blackboard scratch of a riff that characterises “Careful, Kid”; the anger and threats of “Devotion”. It is an album of small revelations; proof you have to take the rough with the smooth, good women or not.
