Lydia Loveless

Lydia Loveless with Opening Act TBA

Endings are messy. Falling in love is messy. Change is messy. Perhaps, change is the messiest of them all. Especially when eyes are on you; when you blast out of adolescence onto stages across the country, then into your twenties, onto more stages and, finally, into your thirties—all on those same stages. The stages that Lydia Loveless has sung her heart out on, has collapsed on, and laughed on, all mirror the stages of her life thus far for the world to see. When Loveless released her first album over a decade ago, she was still a teenager whose songs of debauchery, guzzling alcohol and doing cocaine were an audio wet dream for a certain type of listener who not only wear their music tastes on their (tattooed) sleeve, but in the lifestyle that they emulate: “outlaw” music with brains – akin to Steve Earle, Drive-By Truckers and Lucinda Williams, vintage country heart with a heartland rock soul.

In the end, the music industry is still sadly a man’s world and, as such, Loveless grew up in the spotlight (or perhaps, more accurately, the bar lights) while she was placed on a pedestal. Her voicemail greeting is a tongue-in-cheek ode to this: “Hi, this is Lydia Loveless, savior of cowpunk. Please leave a message and I will get back to you.”

The time between their late adolescence to now is defined by a shelf full of records, hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, and a ribbon of heartbreaks pockmarking their trail. Loveless is a fiercely brave writer who bluntly assesses their life in song: their struggles with alcohol and depression, and the uncertainty of not only the future, but what piecing together the past will mean for the present.

In 2020, they put out their excellent fourth full-length Daughter on their own label, Honey, You’re Gonna Be Late Records, with encouragement from their friend Jason Isbell, but could not tour behind it; the one consistent through line in Loveless’ life was impossible due to the pandemic. They were living in North Carolina with their boyfriend at the time, stuck, away from the stages they grew up on, isolated from their family, and going stir-crazy. As the world came undone and then back together again, Loveless returned to Columbus, where their career first began. Starting anew, Loveless found part-time work at a recording studio (Secret Studios) and began processing the last two years of their life. The title of their new album, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again, came easy—like a mantra from the heavens.

Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again continues the evolution of Loveless. The artist who once sang that she would rather stay home and drink gallons of wine is now on the other end of the bottle, where a bit of resignation resides. Loveless has always been a brutally honest songwriter, one whose articulation of love, heartbreak and bad habits is wrapped not only in catchy melodies but also her finesse with words.

Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again is not only a break-up record drifting back to some of the best of its kind, like Richard & Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, Superchunk’s Foolish and of course, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, it’s also a reminder to keep improving oneself, taking ownership and moving forward—alone, if needed. Complex and captivating, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again is a brave declaration from a person who has survived a lot. Here they lays bare not only their raw pain, but also the strength and resiliency they’ve earned along the way, that only Loveless could hold.