The New York Times Playlist Feature

New Music From Amy Speace, Diagrams and Elle King

By Jon Pareles

Amy Speace
THAT KIND OF GIRL

Resilience trumps regrets, but just barely, on Amy Speace‘s “That Kind of Girl” (Windbone), an album of post-breakup songs and other heartaches depicted with the succinctness of country tradition. “She and I shared a lie/Even though we’ve never met,” Ms. Speace sings, perfectly distilling a situation in “One Man’s Love.” She warns a commitment-shy boyfriend that she can do “Better Than This”; she wrestles with desire in “Nothing Good Can Come From This” and, more wryly, in “Trouble Looks Good on You.” In the mysterious “Strange Medicine,” she’s pregnant with a child “I knew I could not claim.” And in “That Kind of Girl,” she admits, “I let you get to me/It felt like the end of the world.” Ms. Speace made the album in three days of sessions in Nashville, recording live in the studio with a small band, and the music is unadorned but finely considered. It dips into blues, honky-tonk and gospel along with hymnlike piano ballads. Even when Ms. Speace is sad or bitter, her voice maintains its aplomb; as she spells out what has happened, she prizes grace over drama.