Jasper County [Bonus Track]

1	Who Invented the Wheel 3:24
2	Pistol 3:19
3	Trying to Love You 3:48
4	River of You 3:37
5	Baby Don't You Let Go 2:45
6	Standing out in a Crowd 3:21
7	Georgia Rain 5:11
8	Sweet Love 3:46
9	Try Me 3:12
10	Gimme the Good Stuff 3:33
11	It's Alright 2:13
12	Love Will Always Win Bonus Track 4:39

Barnes & Noble

After a self-imposed sabbatical, Trisha Yearwood, one of contemporary country's greatest interpretive singers, returns with Jasper County, which concedes nothing to the pop incursion into mainstream country. Yearwood and producer Garth Fundis keep it close to the earth, with fiddles, dobros, pedal steel, and acoustic guitars plentiful amid keyboards, electric guitars, propulsive drums, and even some nicely arranged strings. The ballads are killer fare -- "Trying to Love You," an acoustic-based heartbreaker that sounds torn from personal experience in a Rosanne Cash mode, is a marvel of shifting emotional textures conveyed vocally and enhanced by a spare arrangement. The album's first hit single, "Georgia Rain" -- a bittersweet memoir of a long-lost love, spurred by a homecoming -- juxtaposes somber verses against surging, keyboard- and pedal steel-rich choruses as Yearwood alternately croons and belts out the piercing narrative. In a bit of a new wrinkle, Yearwood cuts loose and gives full expression to her natural feel for country blues of the funky kind. "Baby Don't Let Go" rocks with a robust rhythm, a sputtering harmonica, and stinging acoustic licks, and Yearwood rides it for all it's worth. Even more impressive, she gives Bobbie Gentry a run for her sultry money in "Sweet Love" with a swaggering vocal punctuated by some orgasmic high notes and seductive spoken asides, as some slinky slide lines and a jittery acoustic guitar solo lend the enterprise a thick Delta ambiance. Trisha Yearwood has never been better, and that's saying something. David McGee

All Music Guide

Trisha Yearwood took an unprecedented four years between her eighth album, 2001's Inside Out, and its 2005 follow-up, Jasper County. The reasons for the extended hiatus were part creative and part personal, as Yearwood weathered the storm of going public with her relationship with Garth Brooks (as of the release of Jasper County, the couple were engaged to be married) -- but the long wait proved worthwhile, since Jasper County is one of her very best records, stretching further musically than most of her albums while being more cohesive than most as well. Reuniting with longtime producer Garth Fundis, with whom she's done most of her best work (he did not helm Inside Out), Yearwood's picked a set of 11 songs that aren't just uniformly strong, but are quite diverse. While there's a strong bluesy undercurrent here, highlighted by the slow-churning opener "Who Invented the Wheel" and the Bobbie Gentry-styled Southern country-soul of "Sweet Love," this is firmly a country album, with few concessions to pop crossover. The tracks that do have a lush, slick surface tend to be the big ballads, such as "Standing Out in a Crowd," but those tend to be grounded with acoustic guitars and Yearwood's impassioned delivery. Plus, even those sweeping slow tunes are offset by such excellent ballads as the heartbroken "Trying to Love You" and the epic "Georgia Rain," which are pure country and lend the overall album a sweet, reflective quality. Even if the album does tend toward relaxed, meditative tunes, Jasper County works because instead of maintaining that introspective vibe throughout the album, Yearwood and Fundis bring in not just those bluesy, soulful songs for balance, but they find two rip-roaring Al Anderson songs -- the white-hot "Pistol" and the old-fashioned honky tonk anthem "It's Alright" -- to give this more country grit than has been heard on any Yearwood album in a long time. At a mere 38 minutes, the album moves along briskly, not just because of the short running time, but because the album is paced well, moving gracefully between ballads, blues like "River of You," and rollicking uptempo tunes. The end result is not just one of Yearwood's most entertaining albums, but one of her richest records, in both musical and emotional terms as well. [This edition includes the bonus track "Love Will Always Win."] Stephen Thomas Erlewine