My Shirt Looks Good on You
Now a veteran of the New England singer-songwriter scene, Catie  Curtis offers her most musically seductive album in 2001, but that's  not necessarily good news. Backed by longtime friends Jimmy Ryan  (formerly of the Blood Oranges and one of the most tasteful, compelling  players in folk rock), bassist Andrew Mazzone, and young guitar-slingerDuke Levine,  Curtis pushes further towards the danceable folk-pop ofShawn ColvinandSheryl Crow, and  pulls back from the close-to-the-bone songwriting that was once her  signature. With the exception of the Southern working-class portrait  "Sugar Cane" (co-written withMary Gauthier) and  closer "The Big Reprise" (a prickly meditation on divine injustice),  Curtis mostly slips into the girl-meets-girl sentimentality of the  title track, the adult contemporary clichés of opener "Run," or  the haphazard coffeehouse diary of "Patience." The latter is a virtue  these songs reveal too rarely.--Roy Kasten