A decade before Ani DiFranco emerged as this generation's hardcore female troubadour, Michelle Shocked escaped the hills of east Texas (via Amsterdam and San Francisco) to play her revolutionary folk blues, a music that is less about politics than it is a personal declaration of independence. On Kind Hearted Woman, she goes back home – to a harsh landscape where she faces death, loneliness and a profound sadness that is as old as the Dust Bowl.

The bad times begin with "Stillborn," in which Shocked captures in raw, chilling tones the picture of a mother cradling her dead child. In the spare, rocking "Homestead," a widowed prairie woman deals with the daily traumas of isolation and chicken thieves. Shocked's flair for emotional detail surfaces amid the loose R&B groove of "Cold Comfort"; in the wake of a murder, she declares, "It's a fact of life that we learn to live again."

The up-tempo half of Kind Hearted Woman, buoyed by a band that includes members of Hothouse Flowers, doesn't cut quite as deep. But this album is easily Shocked's most potent collection since the 1986 field recording The Texas Campfire Tapes, which propelled her beyond the folk circuit. Originally developed as a collaboration with choreographer Mark Morris, Kind Hearted Woman intimately captures the roughhewed essence of Shocked's live persona. (RS 749)

STEVE APPLEFORD