This Woman

LeAnn Rimes, now 22, can't catch a break. After she belted her way into national consciousness at 13 with the Grammy-winning Blue in 1996, comparisons to Patsy Cline came flying around every corner. She spent the rest of the decade ducking countryphiles' charges that she had sold out (a few miscalculations in the electronic-dance direction are all it takes, apparently), and by the release of 2002's unselfconsciously poppy Twisted Angel, the genre had largely given up on her. Now with her album This Woman, she's back and ready to be re-embraced. This Woman is a corrective measure, stripping away the sexiness and post-Britney pretensions of Twisted Angel and steering toward the middle ground between adult contemporary and contemporary country. This is territory that Shania Twain and Faith Hill abandoned as they became slick, sexy superstars, and it suits Rimes well. Though tracks like When This Woman Loves A Man, tucked toward the bottom of the disc, owe more to Janis Joplin than to Tammy Wynette, it's impossible to argue with This Woman's casually country aesthetic.

From the first drum beat of I Want To With You, with it's catchy rhythm and great bridge, to the last chord of the twelfth and final cut of the bluesy Some People, Rimes offers up an eclectic selection of songs and delivers them with a passion and understanding indicative of the woman she now is. Her maturity is highly visible in her beauty and her voice. There are no knockouts here, but on a song-for-song basis, This Woman is Rimes’ strongest album yet, not least because it's the record where she sounds the most comfortable, where she's not yearning for pop hits or aping her idols. LeAnn gives songs the full treatment, merging country crooning with pop pep, in her husky, sultry tones, now apparently at their peak power. Whether she's belting out the powerful ballad The Weight of Love, twanging it up on With You or Something's Gotta Give, rocking along with I Got it Bad or getting bluesy with When This Woman Loves A Man, LeAnn shows off her full range of clear pipes on this album.

This Woman marks the return of Rimes to country, at least in the sense of it being country in the year 2005. Thus, we have the requisite country uber-producer (in this case Dann Huff), and a batch of tunes that could be sung by just about any female (or male for that matter) country singer, all done with just the right air of professionalism and all set for country radio airwaves. Rimes finally seems comfortable in her own skin, singing music that not only appeals to her audience, but also seems to appeal to her. Strong in lyrics, the whole album plays strongly on the use of acoustic guitar, and fiddles. This Woman isn't just the title of her new album; it is also the appropriate designation for the entrancingly beautiful, mega-talented Mrs. Dean Sheremet aka LeAnn Rimes. Right before our eyes, the little girl with the big voice has grown up, and into her voice, in the most captivating way.