2007 Revisited

HANDS OFF CUBAHands Off Cuba (Self-released)You could be forgiven if you hear this as some great lost Tortoise recording, but these locals keep the 21-minute “Nately Scures”—the sole number on their debut EP—swinging throughout, and their music seems more expansive than that of the Chicago ensemble. It works pretty well as a dance track, too.

INTUITIONBetty Harris (Evidence)Best known for her New Orleans-recorded ’60s sides, Betty Harris is a big-voiced and long-suffering soul pro. Producer Jon Tiven works well with Harris on Intuition, with Jerry Ragovoy and Diane Durrett’s “It Is What It Is” a vehicle for her husky timbre and slightly indolent phrasing. The sitar-driven “Tell It to the Preacher Man” stands as a mindless, greasy Crescent City-style groove for today, if not the ages.

—EDD HURT

FIVE WOMEN THREATENING TO GIVE MAINSTREAM COUNTRY A GOOD NAME

While the guys compete to see which one can slather the most hair gel on his head without tipping over, women are busy trying—with varying degrees of success—to save contemporary country music from its own worst impulses. Three of the artists below have yet to sell many records, even though each makes polished, accessible music that expresses lyrical concerns familiar to radio programmers’ most important demographic (middle-aged women, that is). The other two do the same, and are also blonde. Make of this what you will.

UNGLAMOROUSLori McKenna (Warner Bros.)Faith Hill recorded three of Stoughton, Mass., singer-songwriter McKenna’s brilliant, almost painfully intimate songs in 2005. Next logical step: Hill’s husband, the similarly ubiquitous Tim McGraw, stepped in to co-produce McKenna’s first major-label album. Unglamorous employs the finesse and assurance of the Music Row machine without sacrificing the unflinching emotional honesty and attention to lyrical detail that are McKenna’s trademarks. Country radio seems uninterested, and it’s a shame—herself a mother of five, McKenna speaks to the preoccupations of its core listenership with a rare authenticity and empathy.

CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIENDMiranda Lambert (Columbia)At first, the title of Lambert’s sophomore effort seems arbitrary—named, as so many mainstream country albums are, for the first single (which undeservedly flopped anyway). But Crazy Ex-Girlfriend does come on like a tempestuous former lover: gently reflective one moment, threatening murderous vengeance the next. She had me at “His fist is big, but my gun’s bigger / He’ll find out when I pull the trigger.”

CARNIVAL RIDECarrie Underwood (Arista Nashville)Underwood’s sextuple-platinum debut, 2005’s Some Hearts, drew much of its charm from the clever ways in which it found parallels between the superficially dissimilar lives led by the American Idol winner and her audience—there were lots of songs about how it feels to be a young woman leaving home, learning about love and, um, vandalizing your ex’s pickup with a baseball bat. Carnival Ride is less personal and more professional, a successful claim on the territory of 1990s belters like Martina McBride and Trisha Yearwood. She isn’t doing anything new, but she sure does it well.

IF I WAS YOUR GIRLLauren Lucas (Soulthang)In the Music Row system, just because you get signed doesn’t mean you get to release an album—not unless you manage a hit single, anyway. Lauren Lucas’ 2005 album, The Carolina Kind, is still somewhere in the Warner Bros. vaults, probably buried under all those unreleased ’80s Prince tracks. Freed of her contractual obligations, Lucas at last made her proper debut this year with the smart, soulful and self-released EP If I Was Your Girl.

ALMOST MY RECORDSarah Buxton (Lyric Street)Nashville industry types already know that Buxton’s debut album teems with effervescent gems topped by the Kansas native’s irresistible sandpaper-sweet voice—advances have been circulating for more than a year. But her singles “Innocence” and “That Kind of Day” stalled at No. 31 and 26, respectively, so prospective record-buyers didn’t get the chance to purchase her wares until Lyric Street sneaked out the digital-only EP Almost My Record in July. Great! Now where’s the rest of it?

—CHRIS NEAL

BEST LOCAL COUNTRY, OFF THE ROW

Nashville’s corporate music core saturates the American media so pervasively that those residents who make more adventurous, less streamlined country music rarely get the attention given those from Texas and California. But it’s in the margins that the city’s best music is often made, whether it’s from legends who no longer benefit from the big-money well or from iconoclasts who willfully go their own way.

BALLSElizabeth Cook (31 Tigers)Cook’s pronounced down-home verve gives her a buoyant glow reminiscent of her in-your-face heroes Dolly and Loretta, but it’s what else she shares with her heroes that makes her work so singular. As a writer, she’s nervy and contemporary, speaking her mind in language she’d use while dishing gossip with friends, and as a performer, her charm comes from how she treats her lyrics, and her listeners, as companions that are endlessly delightful.