Real Fine Place

1	Coalmine 3:26
2	A Real Fine Place to Start 4:00
3	Cheatin' 3:27
4	New Hometown 3:54
5	You'll Always Be My Baby 4:37
6	Supernatural 4:38
7	Roll Me Back in Time 4:56
8	The Secrets That We Keep 3:40
9	Bible Songs 4:46
10	Tell Me 3:55
11	Missing Missouri 4:16
12	Momma's Night Out 2:53
13	These Four Walls 4:34

Barnes & Noble

Proving that her platinum-selling 2003 album, Restless, was no fluke, Sara Evans is singing like a world-beater on Real Fine Place, which she also helped write and produce. Evans is as adept at building a big, booming contemporary country sound for her up-tempo numbers as she is at allowing an acoustic foundation to shape the ballads. Both approaches inform the potent original "The Secrets That We Keep"; an explicit, sensual country power ballad about what goes on behind closed doors, it's at once tender and red-hot, racing to a climax that features sweet strings crying softly at fadeout. A peerless balladeer, Evans can caress a gentle account of commitment and enduring love -- such as her own "Tell Me" -- with touching conviction made doubly resonant by the rustic touches supplied by fiddle and pedal steel punctuations. She steps things up on an interpretation of Radney Foster's "A Real Fine Place to Start," a rocking, super-melodic, hook-laden, twang-rich celebration of new love that gives Evans full rein to coo the verses and soar on the irresistible choruses. Likewise for Sheryl Crow's "Roll Me Back In Time," a Tom Petty–styled story-song about restless teen newlyweds striking out from their small town for Hollywood, which Evans injects with rich organ fills, snarling, Skynyrd-like electric lines, and a stirring vocal that finds her somewhere between weeping and howling. A fine place, this, for some real fine music. David McGee

All Music Guide

Three years after the 2000 smash Born to Fly, Sara Evans matched its hit status with Restless, where singles like "Suds in the Bucket" and "Perfect" balanced her fun-loving country girl sensibilities with a homespun take on true love. She maintains that balance in 2005 with Real Fine Place. Evans is unabashed and straightforward about loving her husband and her family, and living her life in the eyes of God. But that doesn't mean she can't paint the town ("Momma's Night Out") or sing one of the best country songs about cheating in a while, the aptly named "Cheatin'." "How do you like that paper plate and those pork 'n' beans you're eatin'?" Evans asks with a perfect blend of spite and hurt. "Maybe you should've thought about that when you were cheatin'." Like on "Momma's Night," where a brassy horn section and backup singers punch up the arrangement, Real Fine Place isn't afraid to challenge the conventions of country or even contemporary country. "Coalmine" begins as a typical Dixie Chicks-style traditionalist number, but it's modernized with great lyrics that don't stick to cliché ("Can't wait to get him home/Ain't gonna have nothin' but the supper on...") and an ending section that layers Evans' vocal numerous times over the fiddle and rambling percussion. "Roll Me Back in Time" was written by Sheryl Crow and pop producer John Shanks and it sounds like it, while lead single "Real Fine Place to Start" is a breezy foot-tapper that shows off Evans' throaty vocal over steady pop percussion. While Real Fine Place is pretty slick in its production, it's sure to lure traditional country fans with Evans' rich vocal presence and the album's assertion that the simplest things in life are its truest. In that sense, Real Fine Place is the nicest kind of contemporary country. It looks at both sides of that phrase equally without losing sight of the heart in the center. Johnny Loftus

Entertainment Weekly

No woman currently does big-country schmaltz with more class and better hooks. Will Hermes