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IDENTITY CRISIS
BY FRANKLIN SOULTS
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There’s nothing more annoying or misguided in pop music — particularly in the realm of rootsy pop music — than overemphasizing the value of authenticity. At some level, all performers compact artifice into art. But Shelby Lynne may well be the last authentic product of a Southern culture that for years has been faked by talents and shills alike — something that’s been her blessing and now, with this wholly self-written and produced album, becomes her curse. The dreamy, jazzy opening single, "Telephone," wears its bittersweet melancholy with such natural grace, it makes Norah Jones sound like the new-age suburbanite that her unkind detractors have always pegged her for. But the lyric is suspiciously clumsy in a way that Jones never is ("I wanna walk in clouds covered in clover"). And that’s just the beginning. For the first few songs, this beautifully produced album teeters between naïveté and naturalness, sometimes even combining the two into unlikely fresh tropes like "If I Were Smart." But then things fall apart, as pointless imitative exercises (the Patsy Cline–like "Lonesome") alternate with bluesy Louisiana genre pieces ruined by lyrics that are catty when they aren’t just clueless. Identity Crisis is exactly right: Lynne, it seems, needs others around her to tell her who she should be.
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