PATTY LOVELESS
STRONG HEART
Epic/Nashville • sonynashville.com

Strong Heart is one country album that you'll listen to again and again. Patty Loveless' first album in three years, Strong Heart, is produced by her husband and business influence, Emory Gordy Jr., on Sony's Epic/Nashville label. "You're So Cool" is a lighthearted love song that captures the feeling of being in love and uses a simplistic pop-culture vocabulary. The title track, co-written by Gordy and singer-songwriter Kris Tyler, is much slower and delves into a topic all of us are well acquainted with: working through the hard times in a relationship.

With "You Don't Get No More," Loveless demonstrates a great musical diversity by singing the blues with a pop crossover sound that is driven by harmonica and electric guitar in a throw-it-in-your-face style. It's the kind of song that makes you want to tap your fingers on the steering wheel.

"Thirsty" describes the sweet side of love and the way lovers can quench each other's desire; Loveless sings this one with a strong heart in a style that is identifiable and is one of her best cuts on the album. "I'd just like to be remembered as one of the most emotional singers," she says, and Strong Heart gives her fans just that; a CD packed with punch and Loveless' torch-country style.

— Kathleen Booth

ALLSION MOORER
THE HARDEST PART
MCA Nashville • mca-nashville.com

Allison Moorer has a new album out titled The Hardest Part, which is MCA's sophomoric attempt to elevate Moorer to that super-country-star status. Many music fans may remember her from Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer. You know, the red-headed gal who sang at the dance while Redford and Kristin Scott Thomas danced to "Looking for a Soft Place to Fall." Just loved that. Now at age 28, she's looking and sounding as sultry as ever. What takes Nashville so long to get a talent like her moving anyway? I wanted to hear more of Moorer after Horse Whisperer, but no such luck.

The Hardest Part is impressive. The title track, "Feeling That Feeling Again," is a bluegrass opener that is powerful yet soft and melancholy. Produced by Kenny Greenberg with Moorer and her husband Butch Primm, the album features 10 tracks all co-written by Moorer and Primm (except "Bring Me All Your Lovin'," Greenberg collaborated on). It's packed with powerful ballads.

Complicated, deep, insightful; the lyrics are more dimensional than your average Nashville tune. Audiences are taken down winding roads, through folk, R&B, traditional country, bluegrass; reaching a destination that is rich and soulful. Rolling Stone has lauded it as "spectacular, full of that rare, elegant intimacy that was once the cornerstone of country music," and I agree. It is rare and intimate, and I am enthusiastic about country music's return to that cornerstone, starting with Allison Moorer and The Hardest Part.

— Kelly Roberts

COYOTE ZEN
BLOOD OF MANY NATIONS
Dust Bowl Records • DustBowlRecords.com

Coyote Zen combines Native flute, percussion, and many ethnic instruments from around the world. Created by artist/writer/engineer/producer Jeffrey Gray Parker (who boasts French, Irish, Scottish, and Cherokee heritage), it's a wonderful world-beat album for relaxation and entertainment. Acoustic and electric guitars, piano, synthesizers, drums, and sounds of nature are mixed to deliver an album rich in organic reverberation, conjuring images of the Southwest.

Blood of Many Nations features a guest musician Marci Von Broembsen of Cape Town, South Africa. "Painting a picture for your soul," says Dust Bowl Records, the CD is a perfect companion for a road trip through the Rockies or just about anywhere that makes you think of nature, wildlife, mountains, water, and sunlight. Featured tracks on Blood of Many Nations are "Kilimanjaro" and "Buffalo Twins." American Indian Radio programs Different Drums and Native Sounds-Native Voices have given the CD much attention.

— Kelly Roberts

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