Twilight
Herring us a native of Canton, Mississippi, and "Twilight" reflects her deep southern roots, from the songs themselves to the photograph which graces the album's cover, a contribution from the heralded photographer Jack Spencer.  Herring's mature songwriting evokes the rich, complicated themes of the southern literary giants.  "Emma", for example, a mysterious ballad of a daughter's love for her father, could be a Flannery O'Connor short story set to music.  "Standing in the Water", a distillation of one woman's personal struggle with the haunted history of slavery, sounds like something straight out of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County.  Most young songwritters who tackle such heavy subjects end up drowning under the weight of their own pretension.  Yet Herring has an intuitive knack for staying out of the way as a songwriter-letting the characters speak for themselves, fitting the language to a given setting so that, by the end, the listener is struck by the incredible authenticity of both the songs and the singer.