Real Live Woman ~ Trisha Yearwood ~ Country ~ CD ~ Good

Editorial Reviews

Real Live Woman finds Trisha Yearwood fully embracing the inner soft-rocker she's flirted with for years, and so it makes sense that it's the most fully realized album of her career. Her Cali-rock jones gets a fix here thanks to a Linda Ronstadt cover ("Try Me Again") and a guest shot by Jackson Browne on "Sad Eyes," a Los Angeles-era Springsteen number, but the voice remains hers--a modern-day country girl who's been uptown and likes it. The result is an album that finds the middle ground between the sonic options won for country radio by the Dixie Chicks, the adult-contemporary blues of Wynnona and Bonnie Raitt, and perhaps even, amazingly, a bit of Garth's Chris Gaines project. The title track's the real keeper, a country-soul anthem that revisits the character Yearwood first introduced in songs like "She's in Love with the Boy" and "XXX's and OOO's" and finds her a good deal wiser now--and feeling blessed to know it. --David Cantwell