Hungry Again
In 1997, middle-aged, no longer viable at radio, and as she later said, "not knowing exactly what I should be doing in my musical career," Parton returned to the Tennessee mountain cabin of her youth to "write like I was hungry again." The result is an album that revives her reputation as acountrysinger/songwriter and allows her to sing, totestifyeven, with the kind of authentic, fiery passion absent from her recordings for nearly three decades. Backed by the hang-loose, alt-country band Shinola, Parton performs a stirring and, at times, deeply moving set of autobiographical songs with two interlaced themes: the pain of romantic rejection ("I Still Lost You"), and a homecoming to reflect on a life at the crossroads ("I Wanna Go Back There"). Nearly all of it--the retro-trad of "Honky Tonk Songs," the incest ballad "Blue Valley Songbird," the searching gospel of "Shine On"--seems born of hard-won experience.Hungry Againisn't just Dolly's return to her rural roots. It's the sound of an artist who's found herself again.--Alanna Nash