Trisha Yearwood and Patty Loveless don’t sound much alike, but they do have a lot in common. Trisha Yearwood and Patty Loveless don’t sound much alike, but they do have a lot in common. Yearwood has a big, booming voice, a full-toned, center-of-the-note instrument she uses with unusual subtlety. Loveless has a twangy, mountain-bred voice, an edgy instrument that gains range by the thrust she gives it during up-tempo tunes and the anxiousness she instills in ballads. These vocal differences aside, both women bring emotional resonance to quality songs that pay little heed to Music Row trends or radio formulas. As a result, both have gained that rarest of commodities for a modern country singer—a reputation for integrity. Both released new albums on Sept. 13, too. Yearwood’s Jasper County, named after the rural county in Georgia where she was born, is her first in four years. Loveless has released four albums in that time, all of them strong, including an acoustic Christmas album in 2002. Her new Dreamin’ My Dreams stands up well alongside 2001’s acclaimed Mountain Soul, a bluegrass-flavored record that boosted Loveless’ career even as radio ignored it, and 2003’s On Your Way Home, in which she forged a fresh sound that blends fiddle, mandolin, Dobro and pedal steel with a standard rhythm section. Loveless deepens that sound on Dreamin’ My Dreams, extending her recent streak of terrific records that rivals her outstanding run in the ’90s. Yearwood spent a good portion of her absence helping Garth Brooks adjust to temporary retirement in Oklahoma, but she also shelved an entire album she’d recorded prior to Jasper County. Feeling she’d rushed the recording without spending enough time gathering material, she held onto only a few tracks and started over. That’s not the case with “Pistol,” the album’s most rocking track. Written by Al Anderson and Leslie Satcher, the song struts along to a chicken-scratch guitar, barrelhouse piano and fat backbeat while Yearwood proves once again she’s an underrated rock singer, a talent evident going back to her 1991 debut. It’s on rootsy rockers that Yearwood’s debt to Linda Ronstadt is evident, and when she sings about an exhilarating but unfaithful lover, she sounds like she can give as good as she takes. “You wanted trouble, now you’ve got a fistful,” she sings with a wink and a sneer, “well, that’s what happens when you fall for a pistol.” She seems to have made the right decision, too; her return effort is as strong as 2000’s Real Live Woman or most anything else she’s recorded since her first four albums, all of which remain among the best mainstream country records of the ’90s. If there’s a fault, it’s that the new album can seem too fussed over at times. The hit title song sounds beautiful as a showcase of Yearwood’s voice and Garth Fundis’ tasteful production, but all the prettiness comes off as a little too distant. The emotional connection Yearwood feels as an adult looking back on her small-town upbringing never quite comes across. That’s not the case with “Pistol,” the album’s most rocking track. Written by Al Anderson and Leslie Satcher, the song struts along to a chicken-scratch guitar, barrelhouse piano and fat backbeat while Yearwood proves once again she’s an underrated rock singer, a talent evident going back to her 1991 debut. It’s on rootsy rockers that Yearwood’s debt to Linda Ronstadt is evident, and when she sings about an exhilarating but unfaithful lover, she sounds like she can give as good as she takes. “You wanted trouble, now you’ve got a fistful,” she sings with a wink and a sneer, “well, that’s what happens when you fall for a pistol.” More or less the same guy is the subject of “Trying to Love You,” a beautiful ballad written by Beth Nielsen Chapman and Bill Lloyd that examines a more serious side of falling for someone whose impulsiveness makes him exciting but ultimately unreliable. Yearwood imbues the song with yearning and regret, the soft tones of her voice conveying both the fullness and the rupture that she’s known. Perhaps purposely so, the album begins with songs of tension and separation while heading toward several openhearted songs about finding strength in a good love. Yearwood always pulls her material toward a smart, balanced center—she sounds grounded whether singing of pain or joy. Loveless throws herself more into whatever emotion she’s putting across, and as good as she is at making the best of her voice, she’s even better at finding great material. After having a good ’80s and as strong of a ’90s as any Nashville singer on record, she’s amassing a body of work in the current decade that might be even better. It didn’t start so well: her 2000 album Strong Heart is the only true misstep of her career, as she and her producer and husband Emory Gordy Jr. tried to out-dazzle Shania with modern production tricks and dance tempos. Loveless recovered by making the stringband album of her fans’ dreams, Mountain Soul, but she rightly didn’t stay there, even if the bluegrass audience likely would’ve embraced her. As much as Loveless belongs to Appalachia, she grew up loving straight-ahead country and rock ’n’ roll. She’s often shifted between them all, but now she’s seamlessly blending them into a fresh, modern country sound that no one else has matched. The playing on this album, by stalwarts like Bryan Sutton, Stuart Duncan, Albert Lee and Lee Roy Parnell, finds the soulful fire of both mountain music and rockin’ honky-tonk. Loveless sounds looser than usual but as inspired as ever. She even writes three songs, while still reaching into the deep catalogs of Richard Thompson, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale to find material others haven’t. Loveless rarely covers well-known songs, but she makes several exceptions here. She turns Delaney & Bonnie’s ’70s rock hit “Never Ending Song of Love” into a stomping hoedown. She also takes on two ballads—the title track, which was written by Allen Reynolds and made famous by Waylon Jennings, and Steve Earle’s “My Old Friend the Blues.” The originals find outlaws looking back on the troubles they’ve faced and seeing a thread. In her way, Loveless comes by the tenderness in each more easily, but her versions are still about the costs, as well as the power, of perseverance. She won’t make anyone forget the originals, but she does bring a new dimension to what the words express. Loveless didn’t choose these famous songs because she thought it would help her career. She chose them because they mean something to her. It’s that discriminating difference, the need to connect with a song on a visceral level, that makes Loveless and Yearwood the kinds of singers who stick around.
