The Indigo Girls' latest album, Beauty Queen Sister, will hopefully be their last. After creating 13 studio albums with consistently poignant lyrics and pitch-perfect musical arrangements, the female music duo appears to have hit a roadblock. Beauty Queen Sister fails to show any of the musical creativity or lyrical courage present in the group's past endeavors. Jerkily shifting between folksy narratives like "John," soft rock ditties like its titular track and wannabe power ballads like "Gone," this latest release has no flow or over-arching tone. It feels less like an original album and more like the greatest hits compilation of a bad band.
Even at its best, Beauty Queen Sister comes across as a pale imitation of the Indigo Girls' best work of years past. The album's strongest tracks, namely, "We Get to Feel it All" and "Making Promises," feel somewhat fresh in terms of their instrumental and vocal arrangements, but they stand as the exception rather than the rule. As songwriters, the Indigo Girls have always had a knack for crafting complex and compelling lyrics, but here they resort to clich
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