Reckless
Martina McBride
On Martina McBride’s first album for the Nash Icon label — created to market veteran country singers — she hedges her bets by co-producing with longtime hit-maker Dann Huff (Keith Urban) and relative newcomer Nathan Chapman (Taylor Swift).
Perhaps accordingly, the album presents something old and something new. She tosses out a few pop-country trifles: We’ll Pick Up Where We Left Off and That’s the Thing About Love feature powerhouse performances and bright arrangements, but the lyrics are too contrived to mean anything.
Elsewhere, however, McBride shows how effective she can be when moving away from formula. She excels on wholly modern tunes, such as Everybody Wants to Be Loved and It Ain’t Pretty, both of which feature inventive arrangements that suggest this 49-year-old could beat youngsters half her age.
The timelessness and superb taste shown on the stripped-down piano and vocal stunner You and You Alone and the spare, breezy Buddy Miller duet, The Real Thing, reveal that McBride remains an artist of the first order.
— Michael McCall
Associated Press
Black
Dierks Bentley
Dierks Bentley goes on a wide-ranging if uneven 13-track journey through relationships, applying his gritty country tenor to the adventures of the heart.
Black draws its title from the maiden name of Bentley’s wife, but it doubles to describe sexual ecstasy on the title cut. That might qualify as too much information for some listeners, but the music offers a welcome distraction from the libidinous lyrics.
Bentley’s expressive singing is just about the only thing definitively country about this record, which draws influence from the anthem-rock stylings of Coldplay and U2.
Somewhere on a Beach has already gotten attention, but there are better songs: a funny drunk-dialing tune called What the Hell Did I Say, and the musically appealing Different for Girls, a duet with Elle King that traffics in unfortunate stereotypes.
Light It Up and Can’t Be Replaced are the two best songs. The latter includes pedal steel guitar work by Dan Dugmore, the musical high point of a record that will translate well to the big arenas Bentley plays.
— Scott Stroud
Associated Press
Wilde Lake
Laura Lippman
Every family has its secrets. These, as well as the fragility of memory, have been an ongoing theme of Laura Lippman that she explores with precision and insight in Wilde Lake.
Newly elected state’s attorney Luisa “Lu” Brant inherited her love of the law from her father, Andrew Jackson Brant. Andrew earned respect during his own tenure as the state’s attorney, and Lu holds him in the same esteem as Scout did Atticus Finch.
Now widowed, Lu and her 8-year-old twins live with Andrew in her childhood home in Wilde Lake. The family, which includes Lu’s brother, AJ, moved there when the planned community was built. A new community for a new family, but Andrew’s wife, Adele, died a week after Lu was born.
Wilde Lake smoothly alternates from the present and the past, including an act of violence during a high school graduation party attended by AJ.
In her new job, Lu is anxious to prove herself and decides that she will handle the case of Mary McNally, a waitress who was strangled by a homeless man. Lu’s former boss decides this will be his first case in private practice.
Lippman is an expert at lending a clear-eyed view of the bonds that link people and the truths we tell ourselves to survive. Each of us is a product of our childhood — it’s what we do with it that makes the difference.
— Oline H. Cogdill
Associated Press