Reviews
Barnes & Noble
Working through different modes of traditional country and folk, singer-songwriter-instrumentalist-producer Adrienne Young delivers a profoundly moving third album, a truly transcendent coupling of heart, vision, and inspired musicianship. "Room to Grow" is the best sort of mainstream contemporary country, a bold, driving, emotionally resonant song about building a relationship "stitch by stitch." Its place in the album kicks off a clutch of energetic burners that look at love from different angles. Young's frequent songwriting collaborator, Will Kimbrough, makes his own statement with rocking, fuzzed-out guitar interjections -- he contributed searing leads to Rodney Crowell's The Outsider, especially on "In Between the Heartbeats." With its jazzy organ punctuations and soaring guitar lines, the woozy take on Joni Mitchell's "Free Man in Paris" assumes a decidedly Allmans-like feel, suggesting a longer jamming piece for the concert stage. Balancing out the power surge with melancholy, Young digs into the "River and a Dirt Road," the old-timey atmosphere augmented by a brittle dobro line and a yearning fiddle retort; topping even that, she offers one of the most beautiful ballads of longing and loss in recent memory, "Once More," a honky-tonk duet with Phish bassist Mike Gordon. Singing with a conviction and brio reminiscent of Martina McBride at her finest, Adrienne Young grabs the brass ring this time out. David McGee