Carrie RodriguezShe Ain't MeReview

Carrie Rodriguez’s follow up to her well-received debut Seven Angels On A Bicycle finds her stepping away from her country roots and moving towards pop and rock.

Three years on, Rodriguez has exchanged her cowboy boots for a pair of expensive high heels and substituted long-time collaborator Chip Taylor for Daniel Lanois protégé, producer Malcolm Burn.

Responsible in part or whole for 10 of the 11 featured tracks, Rodriguez sets her stall out with confidence, the surrounding frame owing much to the country twang of her electric fiddle (Absence), the guest vocals of Lucinda Williams (Mask of Moses), the evocative pedal and lap steel guitar of Greg Leisz, and the Hammond B-3 of multi-instrumentalist Burn, not least on the infectiously catchy title track and lead single, She Ain’t Me.

Despite the pop pretensions, there’s little else on She Ain’t Me that sounds like it is chart-bound material, but don’t let that put you off: Rodriguez casts an alluring spell throughout. Where El Salvador sounds like Suzanne Vega at a hoedown, Rag Doll proves a haunting tale of love in the face of adversity, Let Me In is a pleading entreaty edged with a dark-hued intensity, and Infinite Night a gloriously slow building anthem.
She Ain’t Me is simple, direct and honest.