THIS IS THE SOUND OF STARTING OVER

Amanda Shires' 'Nobody's Girl' is an intimate look into heartbreak and healing

- TODD MARTENS

MUSICIAN Amanda Shires released her heartbreak album following her late-2023 split with singer-songwriter Jason Isbell.

ETHAN BENAVIDEZ For The Times

Two years after a crushing breakup, singer-songwriter Amanda Shires is sitting in an empty hotel bar, her arms shaking as she reads a page from her notebook.

She's been stumbling, she says, in interviews, struggling to explain how she transformed one of the deepest pains of her life into art.

The work in question, "Nobody's Girl," fits into a tradition of great heartache albums. And yet it deviates from it. Brazenly honest, pointedly detailed and possessing the sort of vulnerability that feels like an outstretched hand to the listener, Shires' exploration of grief is part examination of the difficulty of moving on and part work of self-help. "Nobody's Girl" is the album as personal quest — for healing, for understanding and for being heard.

"You probably never get over it, completely," Shires says of heartbreak. "I don't think you get over it completely."

Does that scare her?

"No," she says quickly. "It's proof of life. It's proof of taking a risk. It's proof of heart. You did it. You allowed yourself to love, and to open up to a person and to not be a coward to the most dangerous thing: love."

It's a topic Shires knew she would have to address, either in song or in interviews. Shires was once one half of a relatively high-profile couple on the Americana music scene. Her late-2023 split with singer-songwriter Jason Isbell garnered tabloid headlines, in part because the fraying of the marriage was captured in the documentary "Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed." At first, she tried to avoid cataloging the divorce in song. "I tried to write songs about cars, or anything but anything I was going through," Shires says.