Natalie Maines: A Country-Music Rebel Rocks On Her Own

Doesn't hesitate to create audacious moves, and wresting away "Mother" — Roger Waters' hymn to oppressive maternal authority figures from Pink Floyd — is that the biggest one on her initial solo album. Maines takes the "Mother" from Pink Floyd's The Wall and deconstructs it, emotional brick by emotional brick. She rebuilds the melody and radically alters the vocal intonation of the lyric to render it resilient enough for brand spanking new interpretations. "Mother" becomes a plea for understanding; to come back to terms with troublesome relationships through love and trust. Which, among different things, might be detected as Maines' plan to reach intent on Dixie Chicks fans, each gift and former, loyal and hostile.

In "Without You," Maines remakes yet one more man's song — Eddie Vedder's — and turbo-charges it with pop-rock fuel. Her voice is surgingly strong; by the time she hits the chorus, it is simple to appreciate what proportion you have uncomprehensible the type of sapiently aggressive music Maines created with the Dixie Chicks. At constant time, you are hearing her voice in a very new context. The rock edge is very appealing: Maines might have approached "Silver Bell" as a unharness of inhibited energy, frustration or perhaps anger, however the result's a controlled pleasure.

When Natalie Maines remarked from a London stage in 2003 that the Dixie Chicks were "ashamed the president of the us is from TX," she was criticizing Republic of Iraq War policy in a very manner that will earn her instant condemnation and worse, when her combat that war would eventually become a legal opinion within the U.S. No matter: What she associated her groupmates felt in immediate response wasn't simply an reaction from a section of the country-music audience. it absolutely was additionally the cowardliness of a music business running afraid from blunt political concepts in a very unsafe business economy. there is a tendency, therefore, to listen to each song on this album as some style of response to Maines' life-altering remark and her succeeding public retreat. It lurks here and there, to be sure, however once the primary few listens, Mother becomes the work of a mother, wife, feminist, mate and solo creative person taking her place within the public sq. yet again, creating stubbornness sound sort of a reasonably freedom.

It's regrettable that the foremost vulnerable components of this assortment derive from Natalie Maines' nearest collaborator on it: mountain harpist, UN agency co-produced the album together with her, and UN agency wrote or co-wrote its 2 weakest songs, "Vein in Vein" and "Trained." however consider everything else Maines has accomplished here: She's created a flinty album, covering all forms of songs — as well as one that even inserts a backbone into a limp Jeff Buckley composition. whereas it's unlikely that this assiduously eclectic album can realize associate audience as giant as she did with the Dixie Chicks, Maines has created a recording that roils with a well-rested, restless urgency that is capable of thrilling anyone with the nice sense to hunt it out.

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