Kelsea Ballerini keeps the good times rolling

When Kelsea Ballerini first burst onto the scene a decade ago, she was compared to Taylor Swift, but her pop country was characterized less by grand artistic twists and more by understated likability. On career highlights like the infantilized bad boy takedown “Peter Pan” from 2016, the playful Thelma and Louise/“Goodbye Earl” riff “If You Go Down (I'm Going Down Too”) from 2022 or the Kenny Chesney-assisted study In the ambivalent small-town loyalty of “Half of My Hometown,” she has always managed to maintain a poised, optimistic presence, even when composing songs from life's less optimistic moments.

your newest, Pattern, is no different, a characteristically diverse collection where she looks inward with honesty and determination, remaining strong without sounding too heavy. “Is this a fight I will ever win?” she asks. The dark “Sorry Mom” and the courageous highlight “Baggage” look at the turmoil of life with good-natured resignation. In the former, she touchingly thanks her mother for standing by her through some less-than-ideal teenage years, now that they both know everything worked out. The upbeat “Nothing Really Matters” advises listeners to “give the demons some grace” and suggests demonic activities like eating cake and hanging around the house naked.

The album shifts sonic perspective in a way that feels natural and welcome. Folk-pop superstar Noah Kahan shows great male vulnerability in the duet “Cowboys Cry Too.” The breezy “Wait,” the ballad “Deep” and “We Broke Up,” in which the newly divorced woman takes a “hey, whatever” attitude toward relationship difficulties, mix country-pop with R&B influences. On the upbeat climax “I Would, Would You,” a group of female backup singers throw a party while singing about the lifelong power of a friendship that is a matter of life and death. The result is an album about turning life lessons into momentum and turning today's hardships into today's drink orders.