Lou Ann Barton is the most commanding white female belter to erupt out of Texas since Janis Joplin – a singer to whom, in terms of vocal sophistication and emotional projection, Barton is far, far superior. I know this sounds like hype, and I say it hesitantly: it was exactly this sort of overloaded kudos that scuttled Barton's first attempted liftoff five years ago. But, hey, she's that good – and this time around, it's audible.

For Old Enough, her 1982 debut LP, coproducers Jerry Wexler and Glenn Frey took Barton to Alabama's Muscle Shoals Sound Studios (the site of some of Wexler's greatest production triumphs in the Sixties with Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett) and put together an album uncomfortably split between R&B classics (by Irma Thomas, Hank Ballard, the Chantels) and illmatched contemporary tunes from the likes of Marshall Crenshaw and Frankie Miller. The result, with its trademark but dated Muscle Shoals backup, sounded – despite some fine singing – like an instant museum piece.

The commercial failure of the critically lauded Old Enough was a result, I think, of its flawed conception. Barton – an original member of both the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble and an alumna of Roomful of Blues as well – is not a white Aretha or a white Irma Thomas or an almost-black anything else. She is a Texas-bred roadhouse-rock & roll singer with power to burn and style and class of her own to boot. The woman has personality – when she sings, "Something crawls/Beneath her lily skiiin," in her terrific cover of John Hiatt's "Pink Bedroom," the spin she puts on that final word sends little pleasure gremlins scampering up one's spine.

"Pink Bedroom," an acidulous portrait of a trendy teen crumpet ("She's got the lip gloss/She's got the short shorts/She's got her records and/They're all imports"), is exactly the sort of material Barton needs: pure, tough pop rock with no egregious bluesisms appended. In a perfect world, it would be a radio smash – it's the happiest could-be hit to emanate from the Lone Star State since B.W. Stevenson's "My Maria."

If the other seven songs on Forbidden Tones aren't quite up to the standard of "Pink Bedroom," they ain't bad either – and Barton (who produced this LP herself) shines throughout. Backed by such stellar guitarists as David Mansfield, Richie Zito, Dean Parks and T-birds ace Jimmie Vaughan (and by drummer Jerry Marotta, upping the stomp quotient as no mere drum machine ever could), she brings a refreshing, lived-it-all edge to dance-pop stuff like "Tear Me Apart" and flashes those barroomangel credentials memorably on "Tears in the Night" (by Billy Steinberg, coauthor of Madonna's "Like a Virgin"). And she's even better on subtler numbers: the gorgeously harmonized "Quittin Time," for instance, and her surprisingly compelling rendition of the Beatles antique "Every Little Thing" (which Barton ends not with the standard reprise of the chorus but rather – in what may be a bit of mild feminist irony – with the line "When I'm walking beside him/People tell me I'm lucky").

Lou Ann Barton is too good to be allowed to languish on an indie label. She deserves the kind of major-label commitment (and consequent access to top-drawer tunes) commonly lavished on such pop divas as Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. She deserves, in short, another shot. (RS 495)

KURT LODER