Ride
This Mississippi singer shows confidence, conviction, and considerable range on an album debut for which deep Southern roots get a slick Nashville production. Fairchild's big voice has a bluesy streak, but she's capable of supplying whatever the song demands. She's "still Daddy's little girl" in "Tiny Town," the seductive "hellcat" of "Ready to Fall," and a would-be biker who embraces Lynyrd Skynyrd and Merle Haggard as kindred spirits on the title track. OnRide's soaring power ballad, the big production of "I Want to Love You" pulls out all the stops, but Fairchild shows her interpretive potential on subtler fare such as "Eight Crazy Hours (In the Story of Love)"--the ruminative reflections of a truly desperate housewife--and the closing, plaintive "Fear of Flying." Whether she's turning up the sensual heat on the opening "Kiss Me" or swaggering through the horn-laden rock of "Down into Muddy Water," Fairchild seems to fully inhabit each song and make disparate styles her own.--Don McLeese