Albums of the week: Kacey Musgraves plays it safe with a stripped-back sound while Ariana Grande delivers bangers aplenty

Her new sixth album, Deeper Well might best be described as country-pop. It’s an album that plays to Musgraves’ strengths, but falls short of her best album, 2018’s crossover hit, the psychedelic-tinged Golden Hour.

These songs are comparatively unadorned. Retreating into a more stripped back sound, it’s all about Musgraves’ vocals and that’s a good thing because she has a voice that’s made for confessional songcraft. And Deeper Well is very much an album in that vein, one that’s all about exposing vulnerabilities and seeking salvation.

If Star-Crossed dug deep into Musgrave’s divorce from the country singer, Ruston Kelly, Deeper Well is concerned with what happened when the dust settles. The songs acknowledge pain, knowledge, regret, hope and the power of friendship.

The pretty title track finds the 35-year-old looking back to her childhood as she recalls that “the world was as flat as a plate/ And that’s okay/ The things I was taught /Only took me so far/ Had to figure the rest out myself”.

Cardinal, the opening song that’s clearly been inspired by the Mamas and Papas’ California Dreamin’, is a wistful, beautifully rendered meditation, with lyrics seemingly about death. “Are you bringing me a message from the other side.”

The unfussy approach is best captured on The Architect, a gossamer-light song that’s all about self-reflection. “Do we have any say in this mess,” she sings, as acoustic and steel guitars do their thing. While much of Deeper Well plays it a little too safe, there’s much to admire.

On title track, incidentally, Musgraves sings that her “Saturn has returned”. The ringed planet seems to be having a moment of late. SZA has just released a single called Saturn and, on Ariana Grande’s latest album, Eternal Sunshine, a fragment of a track, Saturn Returns Interlude, offers new-agey thoughts about how Saturn’s 29 year trip around the sun can impact us. “It’s time you get real about life and sort out who you really are,” urges a female voice (not Grande’s).

The album seems to take those words to heart. These are songs that mourn the passing of one relationship — something of a divorce album, á la Kacey Musgraves — and celebrate the start of another.

As ever, Grande’s pop instincts are rarely far from the surface. And she’s got some big hitters in her corner. Max Martin, the Swede who has written more US number one singles than anyone except Paul McCartney, puts in quite the shift here. His trademark sleek production is all over the songs and most of them have been co-written with him too.

There are bangers aplenty, not least Yes, And?, which bears something of a passing resemblance to to Madonna’s Vogue.