Restless
Producer Brent Maher had to do something with his time after his prize clients, the Judds, broke up, and in Shelby Lynne, he has found one of the few women in Nashville who can match Wynonna Judd in vocal firepower. In 1993, Maher produced and co-wrote Lynne'sTemptation, a terrific album of big-band country swing which somehow got lost in the shuffle. Lynne's sequel,Restless, is a return to the country mainstream after her left-turn detour through swing. When Lynne opens all the stops in her throat and just wails, as she does on the album's first single "Slow Me Down," there's no mistaking the sheer strength of her voice. But there's a lot more to her talent than that; she can down shift into a conversational murmur, as she does on "Talkin' to Myself," and still make you hang on every word--just by the way she maintains a full, intense tone even at the lowest volumes. Most importantly, her command of tricky rhythmic phrasing reminds one of Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson and few others in country-music history. All in all, this marks the full flowering of a major country talent and stands as one of the landmark events of 1995.--Geoffrey Himes