I Am Shelby Lynne

Shelby's got a brand new bag, okay. And look. And sales pitch. And slightly-altered style, being touted as the next Shania Twain, the new "wonder woman" out of Nashville. The truth is she's still the 'wonder woman' she was back in '93, when, with cropped hair French beret and her own big band, she released the smouldering Temptation album.

Either way, whether then, or now, the first thing that grips you by the throat, heart, soul - or whatever is the most sensitive part of your anatomy - is Shelby Lynne's voice.

As for the lyrics, 'Leaving', tellingly, is the one track on the album Lynne doesn't co-write with producer Nottrell, instead offering sharp lines, as she tosses her lover aside saying: "you'll be okay in time, baby/But it won't be today." As for tracks like 'Life Is Bad', how's this for a savagely realistic tilt. "Waste away to nothing in a dark dusty tomb/Lookin' for the trace of what used to be a room/wipe away the blood from a tormented brow/solve the wicked problem never askin' how." Sounds like a double hangover.

Songs of substance, obviously. They fail musically only occasionally, as in on the too poppy 'Gotta Get Back' where the hunger in the lyric ain't matched by the music. This let's-get-radio tendency that rears its heads more often on this album than on Shelby's debut.

But there's no such failing in tracks like 'Lookin' Up' with the strings singing the blues as a counter-melody to Lynne's vocal and the lead guitar lines. But the song that's maybe the most truthful, ironic and even heartbreaking reflection of Shelby Lynne's love of all things Southern, is 'Where I'm From.' There is a touch of Joni's Mitchel's 'Shades of Scarlett Conquering' in the richly resonant line "Heaven knows this ain't no Margaret Mitchell"

Roots music? No doubt. Great album? You bet. Better still, a hint of real hope for music beyond the year 2000.