you, me, and a redhead (Leopard Skin, 2002)

Kerri Powers has a flair for drama. There's something almost operatic in the way she presents this group of 11 songs - filled with crescendos, decrescendos, dramatic pauses and lyrics about one person's greatest fears.

Powers, who hails from Massachusetts, but sounds like she's fit right at home in Kentucky or Mississippi, confronts some of life's greatest worries in a group of story-songs that aren't afraid to hit a nerve. The heroine of "Daddy Don't Fall Down" contemplates what it might be like to lose a working-class father. In the title track, our protagonist dreams about a red-headed devil who might take away her man; trouble is, her darkest fears are tangling with her reality. And in the rock-oriented "Don't Tell Me," Powers defiantly asserts her right to artistic expression. This is a very personal album, more autobiography, it sounds like, than a chronicle of other people's lives. (X-Country Dist, Box 214, Poultney, VT 05764, E-Mail: xcountry@adelphia.net)