Album Review:
Trisha Yearwood
Jasper County
by Larry Wayne Clark
(MCA Nashville)
Producer: Garth Fundis
Prime cuts: “Who Invented The Wheel,” “Georgia Rain,” “Trying To Love You,”
“River Of You,” “Standing Out In A Crowd,” “Sweet Love,” “It’s Alright”
Critique: She’s contemporary country’s most enchanting thrush, and her four-year
absence from the charts (spiced with all that Garth gossip we can’t avoid) seems
only to have heightened our desire to hear more of her. Her rich, pliant,
laser-accurate voice is the standard against which all others must be measured.
She can rival Martina’s skyscraping high notes, spin a story as deftly as Reba,
bend notes into a bluesy snarl like Wynonna, or purr real pretty like Emmylou,
and make it all look so damned easy. Songwriters love her because, no songwriter
herself, Trisha Yearwood loves them. Throughout her career she has championed
many of Nashville’s finest tunesmiths, and she won't hesitate to reach beyond
Music Row to satisfy her interpretive palate. Jasper County, a carefully culled
smorgasbord of excellent material, continues the Yearwood tradition. It’s
heartening to see her teamed with producer Fundis again, that captain of sonic
warmth and gimmick-free understatement who has helmed her finest work. The edgy
and ironic “Who Invented The Wheel” (first heard on Anthony Smith’s
under-appreciated CD a couple of years back) kicks things off powerfully.
“Georgia Rain” yields a soulful tale that could almost be a where-are-they-now
update of “She’s In Love With The Boy”’s Tommy and Katie. Maia Sharp’s and Sarah
Majors’s “Standing Out In A Crowd” touches a universal nerve as it studies the
childhood agony of being a square peg in a round hole (while hinting at the
rewards that same individualism may yield in later life). “Trying To Love You,”
from the mighty pens of Bill Lloyd and Beth Nielsen Chapman, is filled with
tender yearning. The sexy, Bonnie Raitt-like “Sweet Love” teems with Southern
sass. “It’s Alright” is a Yoakam-like shuffle a-swirl in choral shouts and
growling baritone guitars. Whatever the groove or subject matter, Yearwood
stands and delivers with absolute authority. Yep, a number of talented female
singers have come (and, in some cases, gone) since Yearwood ruled the airwaves,
while still more gather in the wings. My advice? Listen up, girls, and let Miz
Trisha point the way.