Shelby Lynne

The Phil Spector-esque stunner "Your Lies" is one of the best songs to come out of the Adult Contemporary scene since Carole King and Neil Diamond were running the show. The rest of Lynne's second record is a combination of bluesy/country grit, slow-jam soul, and smoldering sexuality, perfectly illustrating why the underrated singer is such a cult and critical fave.

From the title on down, this disc announces not only that Shelby Lynne exists but that she
wants you to listen. Lynne is a true original, synthesizing various, mostly Southern musical
strains into a style that is as one-of-a-kind as an individual's DNA. Scattered about this
engaging, enigmatic disc is a bit of Dusty in Memphis, a touch of Bobbie Gentry's
swamp-country persona, a hint of Prince's instinct for making voices and rhythm... More >

Epistemologically, one tough cookie. A trailer-trash blonde as down-home-and-crazy as George Jones who cut five country albums on the strength of a voice that turned out to have nothing on her writing, Lynne radiates roots signifiers. Yet though her music avoids all shows of pomo dissociation, the harder you listen the more rootless her mix-and-match rock-etc. sounds. Even more than, speak of the devil, Garth Brooks, she's a creature of the recording industry and the smorgasbord-of-the-air it's laid out everywhere. Are the emotions she displays so pithily as synthetic in the end as her harmonica-with-strings or steel/slide guitar? Does that make them less real? Do she or her fans want to know? (Grade - A-)