Prom

1	Put It Out for Good 3:50
2	Driver Education 2:21
3	Rural Faggot 3:54
4	Give In 1:59
5	Covered for You 4:56
6	Blender 2:06
7	Sober Girl 3:02
8	Pennies on the Track 3:49
9	Rodeo 3:00
10	Let It Ring 3:11

Barnes & Noble

Much as she did on her solo debut, Stag, the edgier Indigo Girl gets back to her punk-rock roots on this raucously played but still intimate disc. Ray has said she sees Prom as something of a concept album centered on the insecurity and intrepidness that accompany adolescence -- particularly the experience of a girl coming to terms with her sexuality. That lends a razor-sharp edge to missives like "Rural Faggot," one of the disc's most in-your-face cuts, but it also leaves room for more buoyant sentiments, like those expressed in "Driver Education," which clamors giddily like one of Mick Jones's old contributions to the Clash. Ray has a knack for coming up with instantly infectious melodies, then pairing them with lyrics that inspire reflection -- the exact M.O. employed on "Put It Out for Good," a beguiling tune about the creative spark and the havoc it can wreak on "real life." Realism and idealism mingle readily throughout Prom, what with Ray's calls for "a new gender nation" and her recognition of her surroundings in the nation that exists in the here-and-now. Consider it protest music that works just as well on the dance floor -- providing you're willing to pogo a bit. David Sprague

All Music Guide

Listeners who rallied around Stag, Amy Ray's 2001 collection of punk-kissed roots rock, will find Prom to be an equal if not better slice of "blue state" Americana swathed in a "red state" wrapper. The darker half of the Indigo Girls has tapped into her Southern past and created a record that manages to paint youth as a struggle against both colors of the political spectrum. It's hard to balance sweetness and anger, but Ray -- who always manages to find a kind of winsome humor somewhere in the middle -- makes it look easy, and her not-so-subtle mix of attitude, nostalgia, and compassion makes for a perfectly enlightening road trip of an album. Prom starts out strong with the one-two punch of "Put It Out for Good" ("The stadium lights were breaking through the bleachers/I spent all day pushing tissue roses into chicken wire") and "Driver Education" ("Films and drills and safety illustrations/The crushed cars of driver education"). Both cuts paint the kind of country high-school experience that fueled John Cougar Mellencamp to sing about "Jack and Diane" and Tom Petty to salute his "American Girl," but Ray's youth was more than just "Drinking with the older guys/Tripping by the lakeside." On "Rural Faggot" she comforts a friend on the verge of "coming out" in a small town -- "I know you want to change the truth/We were made by nature's fools" -- and "Let It Ring," with its pounding snare/mandolin attack, is as rousing a challenge to the conservative right's hijacking of faith as any fiery pundit with a hidden earpiece. Musically, Prom hits all the right notes, blending crushing guitars and surging drums with enough melodic picking and strumming to satisfy both "folkies" and "rockers." Ray's vision for a band that would be the direct antithesis of the Indigo Girls may have been met, but it's lost none of the duo's heart, and hearing it cranked to 11 just makes it all the more compelling. Reverend Lee Power