Mandy Barnett: I've Got A Right To Cry : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On her graceful second album, twenty-three-year-old Tennessee native Mandy Barnett distances herself emphatically from the contemporary country charts by dipping back in time and forward in maturity. Tricked up like a Forties siren on the CD package, Barnett covers semiobscure tunes from honky-tonk's midcentury scratchy-juke-joint apex -- think Dorothy Lamour singing Patsy Cline. The tunes lope along at a pleasant midtempo pace, the quick mosey of Porter Wagoner's "Trademark" and the up-down rhythm of "Falling, Falling Falling" delivered in the same perky low key as weepers like Don Gibson's "Give Myself a Party." Barnett's voice is startlingly like Cline's -- caramel smooth and yodel free, although less resilient -- and it sparkles like a simple gem amid the intelligent arrangements, thick with a steel guitar's almost Hawaiian intimacies. (RS 814)

ARION BERGER