Elizabeth Cook

Despite an unfortunate album title, Elizabeth Cook's fourth album was produced by Rodney Crowell and is an attractive Americana outing, especially her endearingly hayseed cover of the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" where she inflects like a young Dolly Parton. Other songs here throw down true honky-tonk grit, akin to Sunny Sweeney's Heartbreaker's Hall Of Fame. "Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman" out Gretchen Wilsons Gretchen Wilson and "What Do I Do" sounds like she has Sweetheart of the Rodeo-era Byrds as her backing band. Bobby Bare Jr. cameos on "Rest Your Weary Mind."

The album title is a contraction -- in full, the relevant song is called "Sometimes It Takes Balls
to Be a Woman." For this moonshiner's daughter (her bio says), having balls doesn't equal
singing on steroids like Trace Adkins or LeAnn Rimes. Instead, Cook rides her Deep South
twang so hard you'd never figure she knew what "vernacular" meant. Only she does, been
to college, too, and she's not ashamed of it. Rodney Crowell produced her fourt... More >