Most artists who appeal to adult listeners tend to settle into a comfortable niche, but Lucinda Williams refuses to play it safe. Instead, her music stings like an open wound, as she continues to strip away the protective layers from her art's emotional core. Though Williams has long been prized for the naked honesty of her music, this collection is even rawer than its predecessors. From the down-and-dirty bar-band blues of "Atonement" to the Rolling Stones-style swagger of "Bleeding Fingers" to the tricky balance of debasement and transcendence in "Ventura," Williams leaves the nerve endings of her music exposed. With the band opting for first-take immediacy rather than polish, some of the most powerful material is also the neediest, as the singer addresses lovers who have disrespected her ("Righteously") or abandoned her ("Those Three Days," "Minneapolis"). Though her attempts at rap on "Sweet Side" and "American Dream" might cause diehard fans to wince, her willingness to take creative chances reaffirms her position at the vanguard of a rootsy progressivism that transcends musical category. Simply put, there's more Patti Smith in her than there is Patsy Cline. --Don McLeese
-from Amazon.com website
It's oddly coincidental that Rosanne Cash's first No. 1 country hit was "Seven Year Ache." As it turns out, it's been seven long years since her previous album, 1996's 10 Song Demo, and though she'd written an album's worth of songs after that, her voice suddenly gave out due to a polyp on her vocal chords. Thanks to voice therapy, Cash was able to resume singing and recording, and the result is the hauntingly beautiful Rules of Travel. Tastefully produced by husband John Leventhal and featuring guest appearances by Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Teddy Thompson, and Johnny Cash, the album is a showcase for Cash's trenchant, soul-baring songs about love and mortality. Nearly every song is infused with a brooding melancholy, even the ones with sweet musical hooks ("Closer Than I Appear," "I'll Change For You"). When you hear the poignant "September When It Comes," a duet with her father and one of the album's highlights, you can't help but be stirred hearing them sing, "When the shadows lengthen and burn away the past/they will fly me like an angel to a place where I can rest." Rules of Travel is an impressive musical return from one of our most gifted singer-songwriters--and her voice, by the way, sounds as good as ever. --David Hill
-from Amazon.com website
It is not just the timbre of Norah Jones's voice that is mature beyond her 22 years. Her assured phrasing and precise time are more often found in older singers as well. She is instantly recognizable, blending intimations of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone without sounding like anyone but herself. Anyway you slice it, she is a singer to be reckoned with. Her readings of the Hank Williams classic, "Cold Cold Heart" and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" alone are worth the price of the CD. Jones's own material, while not bad, pales a bit next to masterpieces such as these. They might have fared better had she and producer Arif Mardin opted for some livelier arrangements, taking better advantage of brilliant sidemen such as Bill Frisell, Kevin Breit, and Brian Blade; or if the tunes had simply been given less laconic performances. Jones has all the tools; what will come with experience, and some careful listening to artists like J.J. Cale and Shirley Horn, is the knack of remaining low-key without being sleepy--sometimes less is not, in fact, more. --Michael Ross
-from Amazon.com website
With each release, this East Coast singer-songwriter moves farther from the strictures of folk into the musical mainstream. While Dar Williams's artistic trademarks--lyrical introspection, melodic warmth, an occasional tendency toward breathy vocal preciousness--remain much in evidence on this collection, produced by Stewart Lerman and Rob Hyman, the expanded musical support adds more rhythmic propulsion and layers of harmonies to the mix. Among the highlights are "I Saw a Bird Fly Away," featuring the harmonica chirp and background vocals of Blues Traveler's John Popper and the keyboard of John Medeski, and a hymnlike transformation of the Band's "Whispering Pines," with vocal counterpoint from Cliff Eberhardt and harmonies from Alison Krauss. Other musicians making key contributions include banjoist Béla Fleck, trumpeter Chris Botti, bassist Stefan Lessard (Dave Matthews Band), and fiddler Mike Kang (String Cheese Incident). Titles such as "Farewell to the Old Me" and "I Have Lost My Dreams" reinforce the spirit of transformation, though one of the strongest cuts here, "Mercy of the Fallen," sticks closest to folk convention. --Don McLeese
-from Amazon.com website
Once again a Canadian perspective helps to bring out the best in American roots music. Like the Band, these three women of the Great North have taken the traditional sounds of their southern neighbor and made them uniquely their own. They inflect the acoustic intimacy of public domain tunes like "Reuben" and "In My Time of Dying," modern classics like Townes Van Zandt's "Waiting Around to Die," and Peter Rowan's "Midnight Moonlight," and their own songs with only the best and most appropriate elements of their punk, trip-hop, and Motown influences. As in the work of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, you have to listen closely to hear how Frazey Ford, Samantha Parton, and Trish Klein veer off from the past into the future: a soulful melisma wrapped in Ford's whisper, a hint of a funk groove in their arrangement of "House of the Rising Sun," Klein's electric guitar peeking out between her banjo and harmonica. Chinatown taps into the quiet power found on the back porches of what Greil Marcus called "old weird America," and with nary a musical misstep, qualifies as a masterpiece. --Michael Ross
-from Amazon.com website
