Dandelion Review

Hungover made Langley a name in 2024 on the back of a duet. Dandelion is the record that makes the case on its own. She produced it with Miranda Lambert and Ben West, which shows in how little polish sits on top of the songs: fiddle and pedal steel mixed close, vocals left with the crack in them, arrangements that stop when the song is finished rather than when the format says so.

Eighteen tracks is a lot, and this is one of the rare long albums that holds. Choosin' Texas arrived first, Be Her carried the spring, and a reissue added a duet with Morgan Wallen that gave the thing a second commercial life. Loving Life Again did it again in July. The writing is specific in the way country writing mostly stopped being, full of places and jobs and names rather than trucks as a category.

The reviews were the story. The Independent gave five stars, NME four and a half, Rolling Stone four, and the aggregate settled in the mid eighties. It opened at number one on 169,000 units, the largest streaming debut for new country material by a woman leading her own record, and went back to the top in September.