Kelly Willis, What I Deserve (Rykodisc) 9-
Any talented, beautiful female country singer has to face many perils in their career. They constantly have to balance the line between being bludgeoned by the Nashville mainstream into a vapid, perky sex kitten (Shania Twain) or driven away from country altogether (Maria McKee). One would do well to take on the gutsy and independent Lucinda Williams as a role model. Kelly Willis has taken a step in the right direction with her fourth album. She is no stranger to reconciling the conflicts between her rockabilly roots and the pressure to be a commercial success. What I Deserve is her bid for popularity that is polished but not too slick, taking one step forward, one step sideways in her squaredance with potential mass popularity. On her irridescent cover of Nick Drake's "Time Has Told Me," she's your favorite hippie space cowgirl having a Sister Lovers style hootenanny campfire on the moon. Unfortunately her lovely voice does not maintain such a vivid identity for the whole album. Despite the capable songwriting assistance of Gary Louris (Jayhawks, Golden Smog) on three tracks, most of the songs do not go beyond pleasant-but-ordinary. Next time out if she could ditch the weak Paul Westerberg and Paul Kelly covers, hole up for a couple years and dig deep into her songwriting chops, she'll easily top this and finally get what she deserves.
