Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love

by Thom JurekTrisha Yearwood left MCA Nashville on a high note in 2005 with Jasper County. It was her first record in five years, and one of her best. That said, it was merely a taste of what was to come when she spread her wings and went off on her own. Two years later the bounty of that decision comes to the listener on Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love. Produced by Garth Fundis, who worked on Yearwood's early records and Jasper County, the album appears on the independent (but well-distributed and promoted) Big Machine Records, and it is obvious that this is the album Yearwood's wanted to make her entire career. Fundis understands Yearwood's strengths as a vocalist and her creative ambition so completely he left off the studio gimmicks and compression trickery which plague so much of what comes out of Music City. Musical instruments like electric guitars and basses sound like what they are, not simulated '70s arena rock constructs. Acoustic guitars, fiddles, and mandolins ring natural and true, they don't need reverb and it's OK to hear the strings squeak because they are being played. The 13 songs chosen for this date are firmly in the country vein and were written by some of the best in the business, including Matraca Berg, Jim Collins, Gary Harrison, Billy Joe Walker, Karyn Rochelle and Tommy Lee James, Clayton Mills and Tia Sillers (who penned the title track and first single), Leslie Satcher, and others. The rollicking bluesy rockabilly that is the title cut rocks right out of the gate. There's a powerful B-3 worthy of Booker T. Jones pumping in the background, a pair of killer acoustic strings, a bluegrass mandolin, and a funky bassline throbbing under the drums, which are for a change nice and loud -- Nashville seems to hate the sound of real drums these days and squashes them in their mixes; Fundis lets them rip, along with a roaring electric guitar. Yearwood just goes for it, digging into the grain of the lyric and getting right to her blues growl, which comes out live a lot but seldom on her records. They should shop this track to the Top 40 because it smokes.... Read More...