Nashville's most unjustly ignored debut last year was Sara Evans' Three Chords and the Truth, an album that crested with the levee-breaking flood fable "The Week the River Raged." Her follow-up doesn't reach any peaks quite that high, but it does contain more variety and fewer valleys. On No Place That Far, Evans references Boy George's "The Crying Game" and detours into both uplifting gospel territory and depressing Carter Family-style close rural harmonies. But Evans' real forte is brisk commercial stuff, mainly about women starting over: a rockabilly duet with George Jones that hints at his old Fifties white lightning; a heading-out-of-New Orleans-with-Rand McNally divorce waltz in which both the knot and (if you trust her pronunciation) the night come untied; and an album-opening hoedown where her big, brave alto yearns for a corner in Winslow, Arizona. Could Sara be the girl, my Lord, in the flatbed Ford? (RS 801)

CHUCK EDDY