Country: Ashton Shepherd, "Where Country Grows" (MCA Nashville)
Her emotional presence on "Look It Up," the outlaw-countryish new single on her second album, vibrates differently from that of the usual female country revenge song. It's about a woman listing the faults of her husband after the last line has been crossed -- "The word is faithful/ look it up," etc. -- and it's neither hot nor cold, nor very funny. It's corny and high-handed.
The song's power -- if not its charm -- comes from her voice. I don't mean her accent. Shepherd comes from Alabama and sounds like the high, trebly frequencies of a steel guitar. She's a single-stoplight farm-town girl: Got it?
Her real weapon is vocal control. She can begin a short word in a whisper and make it loud and penetrative, jumping a wide interval from a chest voice to a head voice, ending on a showy release of breath. Her style is precise and elastic and overwrought and cartoonish, queasy and sometimes exciting; it sounds created in a scientist's lab with help from Kristen Wiig.
She has many different strategies and often uses many within a single track, which grows exhausting. And while the album pushes her in the direction of sass and sharp one-liners, those aren't necessarily her strong suits. The album's cleverest songs -- "Look It Up," "That All Leads to One Thing," "Tryin' to Go to Church" -- are not the best ones.
Her voice seems to bind her. What she needs are songs that unwind her instead of proving her authenticity, godliness and mother wit. Given a reprieve, her singing becomes a treat. Tear-jerkers will do it, such as this record's ballad "I'm Just a Woman," one of the two tracks she wrote on her own. And comedy songs will do it, such as "Beer on a Boat." A low conceit sets her free.
- BEN RATLIFF, NEW YORK TIMES
R&B: Jill Scott, "The Light of the Sun" (Blues Babe)
Scott's fourth album -- her first to reach No. 1 on the Billboard album chart -- puts her positivity to the test. And therein lies the power of "The Light of the Sun." She is dealing with adversity as she raises her son as a single parent, and this CD shows her to be vulnerable in heretofore unheard ways. "I am so afraid for me," she sings in "Hear My Call," the piano-and-strings plaint that is at "Light's" emotional core.
But don't think for a second that Scott is going to let the hard times get her down. Instead, "Light" is, for the most part, a hard-fought party record, as the ever-more-confident vocalist and rhymer goes old-school soul on "So in Love" with Anthony Hamilton, old school hip-hop with Doug E. Fresh on "All Cried Out Redux" and, with the help of rapper Eve, cuts to the chase on the delightfully funkified "Shame" with a crucial question: "What you so scared of me for? I'm just a woman."
- DAN DELUCA, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
