World Cafe Next: Angaleena Presley — npr.org

Angaleena Presley. Blu Sanders/Courtesy of the artist hide caption Angaleena Presley's American Middle Class — one of NPR Music's favorite albums of 2014 — is her first solo record. But Presley isn't exactly an unknown entity: As one-third of the Pistol Annies, performing with Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe, she's topped the country charts. As a solo artist, Presley turns an unflinching eye on small-town life in the South. Her songs are populated with down-and-out characters, both fictional and drawn from her own hometown of Beauty, Ky. Inevitably, she both treats them and embodies them with humor, tenderness and brutal honesty.

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