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CRUEL MOON
Buddy Miller
(Hightone/Warner)
Miller may be best known as a sought-after guitarist-songwriter-producer in and outside of Nashville -- he's played on countless sessions, toured with Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris, and provided songs for LeAnn Rimes and The Dixie Chicks -- but he's also a formidable solo performer who deserves to expand his cult, alt-country following.
His third solo effort is another collection of love-gone-bad songs (mostly co-written with his wife Julie, strangely) that range in tone from jaundiced to heartbreaking and harrowing.
Hearing him sing of his "dearly departed" in his troubled drawl on the claustrophobic opening cut Does My Ring Burn Your Finger makes you fear the worst; you suspect the wife didn't just depart for a weekend trip to her parents' place. Love Match, a galloping duet with Earle, lightens the mood with its sly love-as-boxing metaphor.
Sometimes I Cry and a cover of Gene Pitney's I'm Gonna Be Strong are vulnerable, wrenching numbers, nicely augmented by Joy Lynn White's harmony vocals. Harris and Julie Miller also pull harmony duty; Tammy Rogers of The Dead Reckoners is a fiddling force throughout; while Buddy Miller confidently navigates the disc through murder ballads, rollicking roots-rock, straight-up country weepies and a soulful reading of The Staple Singers' It's Been A Change.
You won't hear a much better Americana album all year.
Track Listing
1. Does My Ring Burn Your Finger
2. Love Match
3. I'm Gonna Be Strong
4. Looking For a Heartache Like You
5. Cruel Moon
6. Somewhere Trouble Don't Go
7. In Memory Of My Heart
8. Sometimes I Cry
9. I'm Too Used To Lovin You
10. I'm Not Getting Any Better At Goodbye
11. It's Been A Change