
Margo Price’s solo debut starts with a bang with “Hands of Time,” an epic story-song about a woman leaving home and attempting to make her way in the world. “All I want to do,” she sings, bathed in a wash of countrypolitan strings, “is make my own path/ I know what I am, I know what I have.” That remarkable song’s autobiographical urge — and Price’s album title, too — clearly have Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” in mind. Price has Lynn’s spitfire sass and her way with a pen, too — and that pen keeps finding its way back to the sounds typical of Lynn’s heyday. Save for a couple of diversions into rollicking country-soul and ’60s-vintage pop, her songs are modern tweaks of classic honky-tonk, from the Waylon-esque boom-chick of “Tennessee Song” to the uptempo fiddle-and-steel combinations of “This Town Gets Around” and the two-stepping put-down “About to Find Out.” For those on the lookout for alternatives to what currently passes for country music, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter” is the latest reason to cheer.