Dixie Chicks - Taking The Long Way

What better way for the Dixie Chicks to bounce back from the ridiculous (not to mention frightening) events of 2002 than to hook up with producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin, collaborate on new songs with some of the best and brightest pop songwriters around (Gary Louris of The Jayhawks, Neil Finn, Dan Wilson of Semisonic) and largely re-tool their entire sound into something far more reminiscent of late-70s California rock and Americana than anything that comes out of Nashville these days. The result is the Chicks' best and most consistent record to date. The usual catchy melodicism, gorgeous harmonies and stellar musicianship are still in abundance, and singer Natalie Maines -- God bless her -- is nothing less than a force of nature. The trials of recent years have left a mark on these women, however, and you can hear it without even trying very hard. "Not Ready To Make Nice" is the only track that explicitly addresses the fall-out from "the incident," as they call it, but there are undercurrents of darkness, anger, sadness and alienation all over this record, which only serve to give the songs a power, maturity and seriousness (in the best sense of the word) that the Chicks, for all their tremendous talents, have never quite achieved before. And for the second record in a row, the Chicks deliver a gorgeous tune about a parent's love for a child ("Lullaby"), but this time, in addition to tugging at your heart, they do it in a style and sound that would have been completely at home on Jenny Lewis' little indie-rock record (see further down the list). This is simply a terrific, moving piece of work, from start to finish. Good riddance, all you myopic, misguided, pseudo-patriotic country fans -- if you don't want to love these ladies anymore, I'll gladly take it from here.

LISTEN / DOWNLOAD: Everybody Knows, written with Gary Louris (you can hear him singing back-up at the end, Jayhawks fans), a lilting piece of Americana about the little self-deceptions we all engage in, the steely resolve we all have to adopt sometimes, just to get by.