Amy Rigby: Til The Wheels Fall Off : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Amy Rigby has stood out as one of music's most accurate reporters of the lives of working class women, setting her songs to pop, country and folks sounds. She does it again on her fourth effort, Til the Wheels Fall Off, a collection of tales about women who won't settle down ("Shopping Around"), women who are a little too settled ("Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?") and women who struggle between resignation and hopefulness (every other track). Rigby's strength is her eye for detail and her time-weary voice, which sounds like it might crack just before it dusts itself off and carries on, even and steady. Nowhere is the feeling stronger than on "Don't Ever Change," where Rigby's describes a daughter, utterly indifferent to her mother: "She had chipped nail polish/Writing on her hand/She was nodding her head to her favorite band/Staring into space like she was all alone/But I didn't take it personal/It meant that I was home." The album is full of similar moments of pathos and humor, a delicate combination, but one Rigby has mastered with equal parts goofball charm and poetic grace.

CHRISTINA SARACENO
(April 21, 2003)