Carrie Rodriguez

Love and Circumstance (Ninth Street Opus)

By Daniela Garcia
Published: May 3rd, 2010 | 1:00pm

Cover songs are a tricky business; people will often either appreciate the new spin on an old favorite or protest at the defamation of an already great track. As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Luckily for Carrie Rodriguez, she has successfully avoided any of that stigma in her third studio album, Love and Circumstance.

An established country-folk darling from the heart of Texas, Rodriguez has taken a handful of classic tracks from her genre and truly made them her own. Even for those unfamiliar with the big names of the country music world, some songs on the album are too big not to know, like Rodriguez’s soft wailing version of Hank Williams' “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and her feminine twist on “I Started You Loving Again” by Merle Haggard. The standout “La Puñalada Trapera” finds Rodriguez straying into Tejano music. It’s a surprisingly smooth transition between genres; she avoids the typical instrumentation of the genre and still captures the sad yearning behind the lyrics. It’s a well-done tribute to her Mexican-American roots and shows that Rodriguez should consider singing in Spanish a bit more often.

Rodriguez doesn’t really tamper with the original structure of the songs she’s chosen to cover, so what makes the album is her sweet yet powerful vocals. While Love and Circumstance is a strong effort, another album with a bit more originality and genre-crossing could help recognize Rodriguez for the great musician she really is.

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Carrie Rodriguez official Web site

Carrie Rodriguez MySpace page

Ninth Street Opus