Dixie Chicks

All through 2000, country radio was flooded with "Goodbye Earl," a song about how a battered wife and her high school pal decide to off the abusive husband with a bowl of "special" black-eyed peas. Some stations ran public-service announcements following the Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye Earl" about how to properly report spousal abuse. Sure, they were increasing community awareness, but it almost seemed as if they also feared a rash of Chick-related poisonings. And who could blame them for worrying? Not only did the women make the operation sound rational, but the giddy menace with which Natalie Maines inflected "Earl had to die" was infectious.

Sisters Martie Maguire (fiddle) and Emily Robison (banjo) had three dull traditional records to their name before enlisting Maines' nasally pinched sass. Things changed quickly. The title track of Wide Open Spaces follows a young girl who leaves home because she needs "room to make big mistakes." On "Let 'Er Rip," Maines growls at a lover to dump her now rather than take all night to break it to her gently. And a closing romp through Bonnie Raitt's "Give It Up or Let Me Go" showcases Maguire's and Robison's chops in a taut band context.

Fly finds the trio flexing its autonomy that much more brashly. "Ready to Run," which makes fear of commitment an equal-opportunity affliction, is a genuine stroke of idiosyncratic freedom. In this context, the pathetic "Cowboy Take Me Away" is an unforgivable sentimental evasion. Still, even if the Chicks never fully wriggled out of the corset Nashville laced them into, they at least got a good start on loosening a few of the stays. Home was in many ways a feint toward authenticity, invoking the ladies' acoustic and bluegrass roots, so timely in the era of O Brother, Where Art Thou? But in song after song, from the defiant "Long Time Gone" to the heartbreaking "Travelin' Soldier" (the latter a hit even after Natalie foolishly exercised her right to free speech and criticized President George W. Bush), the album title referred sharply to that place you can never go back to. The live album is as redundant as most, of course, but full of verve regardless, and a decent introduction for civil libertarians, Toby Keith-haters, and other latecomers to the Chicks' camp. (KEITH HARRIS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide