Iris Dement's charming 1992 debut, Infamous Angel, came across as a family scrapbook filled with rustic reminders of front-porch romances and back-yard daydreams, a twangy celebration of country-music tradition and small-town life from a sweet-voiced optimist who looks at the Mason jar and always says it's half full.

But her new album, My Life, is more like a diary, a bittersweet collection of fist-clenched confessions draped against a bucolic backdrop of mandolins, fiddles, dobros and acoustic guitars. The soul-on-the-sleeve sincerity and thick Ozark Mountains accent that endeared this 33-year-old Arkansas native to such folkie peers as John Prine and Nanci Griffith are still her trademarks.

But DeMent now has learned to burrow beneath the nostalgic naiveté of Infamous Angel and confront her fears and frustrations, resulting in a splendid but sobering second album that replaces such life-affirming romps as "Let the Mystery Be" and "Hotter Than Mojave in My Heart" with brooding ballads about regret, resignation and, ultimately, resolution.

"You've Done Nothing Wrong," for instance, is a belated apology to an estranged lover, a heartfelt hymn of closure that embraces every element of a classic country tear-jerker, except the blame ("You stayed right here beside me even when the love was gone/And just because I'm hurtin', that don't mean that you've done somethin' wrong"). In "Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day" an Idaho housewife trapped in a stale marriage ("We make love and then kiss goodnight/He rolls over, and he's out like a light") watches her self-esteem wilt along with the dying flowers in her garden.

But the album's emotional linchpin is the riveting "No Time to Cry," which examines DeMent's pain at being unable to grieve over her father's death. Rather than mourn and move forward – as she vowed in the touching "After You're Gone" (from Infamous Angel), written before he died in 1992 – the singer bottles up her sorrow, distracting herself with daily chores and the evening news: "I'll take a beer from the 'frigerator and go sit out in the yard/And with a cold one in my hand, I'm gonna bite down and swallow hard," she rationalizes, "because I'm older now, and I've got no time to cry."

DeMent is still working on harnessing the power of her voice, a yearning, gospel-trained soprano that sometimes overemphasizes her accent and allows a dramatic quaver to slip into a distracting yelp. But her ability to write about intensely personal – and often painful – moments without romanticizing them shows that the wide-eyed farm girl who once was content to "Let the Mystery Be" is now pondering issues that make the difference between healing and merely coping. (RS 688)

DAVID OKAMOTO