Mary Lou Lord

As anyone who's spent much time in a major city can attest, street musicians are pretty annoying. For the early part of her career, Mary Lou Lord, who cut her teeth busking in Boston, recorded nothing that made her an exception. Her first batch of singles and EPs, on Kill Rock Stars, presented her as little more than an enthusiastic indie-rock fan (she had a particular weakness for the Bevis Frond and Daniel Johnston) with a nice if wispy voice. During a period when female songwriters were commanding so much attention, the singer -- so girlie-voiced she made Juliana Hatfield sound like Courtney Love -- seemed out of step with the spirit of the age.

By the time Lord recorded her first real album, Got No Shadow, alt-rock was out of commercial favor. Lord sang like a real adult now, recording solid versions of her own songs and material by Freedy Johnston, along with the folk oldie "Shake Sugaree." "She Had You" is a tale of lingering jealousy, worthy of Elvis Costello, and "Some Jingle Jangle Morning" -- a snapshot of an aging post-indie rock scene where "No one sees much of anyone these days" -- sounds more timely now than when she'd originally cut it years earlier. Even the album's production sound, a carefully burnished folk rock, seems fitting, as if Lord was making the sort of accommodations to the mainstream that most aging indie types were making in their everyday life.

If anyone had heard it, Got No Shadow could have been as much a landmark in its way as Jackson Browne's Running on Empty was for post-hippies in the '70s. But the disc did nothing commercially and didn't generate much interest among her fans, and Lord largely stayed out of the studio after that. Her only other full-length disc is a live collection, recorded back where she started, in the subway. The disc offers nice readings of Richard Thompson and Bruce Springsteen ("Thunder Road," believe it or not); it would be a shame if Lord didn't take another crack at a real record. (KEITH HARRIS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide