Mariel Buckley

Riding high from all the acclaim that has greeted her third album, Calgary based singer-songwriter-guitarist Mariel Buckley is clearly on a roll. Everywhere I Used to Be owned the country charts for quite a while in 2022, and has garnered Buckley adoring press from the United States and as far away as Britain.

Back in 2018 Buckley certainly seemed ready for some success upon the release of her sophomore CD Driving in the Dark, but then the COVID shutdown as well as a vocal cord injury set her up for a long stretch of introspection, boredom, and a bit of brooding: fertile ground, as it turned out, for this talented country-folk songwriter.

The honesty of the self-examination in Everywhere is compelling and impressed many critics. Here’s a comment from Maximum Volume Music: “There’s a stark beauty about ‘Hate This Town’ which portrays a broken romance in a broken town where everyone knows your business and you just want to get high to enjoy some brief respite from the situation.” Buckley has said that she wrote her newest album for losers and underdogs, and the bleak honesty of her songwriting has lots to offer. “I want every outsider and lost soul to feel seen and safe with these songs,” she says. “I wrote it for anyone who’s ready to make a change, and especially for those who aren’t.” Hal Horowitz of Holler sees Everywhere as a big step forward for Buckley: “Her palpable confidence in her talent, along with some hypnotic melodies, is on track to make her a significant alt-country/Americana presence.” And as one of the reviewers for Americana Highways noted, “She writes consistently hummable melodies, sings with conviction, and conveys not just melancholy and pain but also compassion and tenderness.”

Consider checking out the woman who has been called “the Mary Gauthier for the next generation.”