“It’s wild, the ways that humans try to make boundaries out of things.” With her third LP, COUNTRY, Gudasz interrogates borders of land and sea, mind and body: the limits of the lines we draw for ourselves. Gudasz issued a solo record with 2020’s Cinema (“★★★★ a career-making star turn” —MOJO) after her 2016 debut Oleander (“the Joni Mitchell the South never had” —Bitter Southerner). Between LPs, Gudasz played in the live bands of Hiss Golden Messenger, Eric Bachmann, Big Star’s Third Live & spearheaded the Ask Me Anything super trio tour with Libby Rodenbough and Kate Rhudy. She’s staked out her own poetic corner as a songwriter, drawing upon influences that span rootsy surf, witchy rock and roll, cinematic Southern twang, and dreamy art-pop. A turquoise underdog of a semi-hollowbody guitar that Gudasz dug out of a closet became the songwriter’s conduit to an album as she worked out the shimmering “Fire Country,” around which eight more songs fell into place. Daily walks in the woods deepened the connections Gudasz felt with the natural world. “A lot of the songs were written in movement.” Gudasz recorded most of COUNTRY with longtime pal Dante High’s Ari Picker, whose self-built Goth Construction studio in nearby Pittsboro made for a potent outpost for their work. Tangling with the contradictions and unanswerable questions of her being, COUNTRY pierces at the human desire—the need—to live free, unbound, unlimited. —Allison Hussey