THE LINER NOTES

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Where her debut for the label took the first all-important steps towards redefining the Lynn Anderson sound, this sophomore release for CBS feels as if it’s standing in place; less a cohesive collection of Lynn Anderson songs than a series of disparate tracks looking for a common groove. Tracks that, on the whole, tend to stifle and compress this incredible voice they should be lifting and freeing.

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Not that there aren’t moments; this is a Lynn Anderson album, after all. Glenn Sutton’s “I Found You Just in Time”, co-written with Billy Sherrill, is an open valentine to the love of his life wrapped in an A-list Nashville ballad. Poignant and heartfelt, it stands as perhaps one of Sutton’s best songs, and best productions; a shimmering countrypolitan arrangement underscoring the simplest of lyrics, allowing Lynn’s vocal to weave from verse to chorus almost effortlessly, as if she was writing the lines in the card as she sings them. And Sutton’s even-handed production on John D. Loudermilk’s “It's My Time” takes an acoustic folk-country cue from the Mickey Newberry-Tom T. Hall school of storytelling, layering gut and steel-stringed guitars and Jordanaires harmonies around Lynn giving it a Back Porch Majority/New Christy Minstrels feel.

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But head and shoulders above all is the album’s most unexpected track; a reimagining of one of country music’s biggest hits; a song so closely identified with its singer and writer that the artist and song were virtually synonymous. But in the hands of Glenn Sutton, Conway Twitty’s “Hello Darlin’” becomes unequivocally Lynn Anderson’s. Building the production in a key lower than we’re used to hearing from Lynn, Sutton gives her delivery a depth, a gravitas and an emotional pull that ranks as one of her all-time career best performances, and the standout cut on this eleven-song set.

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Like a rose among thorns.

 

J Buck Ford