Crys Matthews - Reclamation (2025)

Crys Matthews has a new album, Reclamation, releasing this week. Crys confronts struggles for justice and exquisitely tells it like it is. She’s unilaterally respected as a justice warrior, and her songs hit heavy and deep. But more, she’s here to reclaim the place of black and brown, LGBTQ and women folks within the fold of the country and Americana music canon. An adept songwriter, Crys probes racism and sexism in various contexts, women’s rights, and the place of LGBTQ individuals within society and Christianity as effortlessly as she considers the true meaning of human life in turn, and often simultaneously. She’s not easy to sum up and place into a labelled box. The best way to appreciate what she does is to open to the experience, turn on and listen to the album’s 16 well-crafted songs (and an interlude) from start to finish.

“The Difference Between” opens the album with a power statement that contains beautiful tones, guitar licks and a rootsy rock and a suggestion for the bigoted to build a wall around themselves: “oooh the difference between me and you. We’re as country as we want to be without all the hate and the bigotry.” The chorus is an ear worm and the music is catchy as all get out.

“The Bigger Picture” is an amazing rumination on what the kind of life lessons that her mama learned when she retired, lessons that are just like putting a puzzle together until you see the big picture: “Day by day,
minute by minute / inside out or outside in /you won’t understand the whys, but the whys have their reasons./ You won’t see the bigger picture until you sort out all the pieces.” Acoustic guitar, pedal steel, organ and electric melodies buoy the song’s peaceful wisdom.

“Suit and Tie” speaks to the issues of gender conformity with a loping rhythm and a touch of darkness: “This world is a mess, and it’s getting worse as days go by / uncivil unrest about who’s and girl and who’s a guy, but this heart beating in my chest knows the truth I can’t deny/ I might look good in a dress, but I feel better in a suit and tie.”

“Some Roads” spotlights Crys’ vocals dueting with Shannon LaBrie on the chorus in a pretty and spine chilling way, as the song offers salient life advice: “Some folks are just speed bumps in your rearview — You gotta learn to keep it moving when you need to. / They come from out of nowhere just to slow you down without a care.” All this takes place over Americana music and touches of piano and lap steel.

“My Skin” features Kyshona as it starts out with gently thoughtful piano and some confidential, whispered questions: “Is my skin so egregious to them? Tell me, when, when will it end?”

“Sister’s Keeper” addresses the expressions of the #metoo movement and the overturning of Roe v Wade with a soulful almost jazzy groove and frustration: “Every time we catch our breath, they try harder to choke out what we’ve got left / And it’s a mad, mad, world if you’re a woman or a girl. / They don’t see us, they don’t hear us ’til they fear us, ’til they fear us / Come on we’ve got work to do.”

“Waking Up the Dead” is the album closer with a tale of reflections and seeing ghosts in a Quaker pacific cemetery. This song spotlights banjo and a hearty groove, with the rousing “the ghosts in this cemetery don’t scare me / Dirt on my soles from a graveyard stroll picking up pieces of the past / hjnand the ghosts don’t scare me in this cemetery, no, no / they’re singing, “Freedom! Freedom at last!”