SHERYL Crow has always been a country girl at heart, as memorable collaborations with Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Loretta Lynn testify. Now she has moved to Nashville, the spiritual home of country music, and, as the title of her new album suggests, it feels like home.
While Crow’s voice doesn’t have the angelic fragility of Emmylou or the embracing warmth of Chapin Carpenter, it does have that lived-in, hard-drinking, world-weary feel which fits the country genre like a glove.
Highlights of this entertaining record include the deliciously over-the-top Waterproof Mascara, straight from the Tammy Wynette school of weepies; We Ought To Be Drinkin’, a hymn of praise to country music’s favourite drug; and the plaintive, doubt-ridden Callin’ Me When I’m Lonely. Feels Like Home is an entirely natural progression for Crow, whose recent tribulations (breast cancer and engagement to the disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong) entitle her to cry long and hard, country-style, into her whisky and her beer.
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