Allison Moorer - The Duel [Enhanced]

Where Allison Moorer's last studio album was an elegant, sophisticated update on classic southern country soul, her Sugar Hill Records debut The Duel is heedless and blunt, and a little bit rough around the edges. The opening guitar figure on "I Ain't Giving Up On You," for example, isn't exactly studio house-broken. This is intentional.

Allison and her co-producer/songwriting partner Doyle "Butch" Primm and co-producer R.S Field took a new, thoroughly unrehearsed band into the studio and cut eleven songs in a dozen days. Butch even lured Field into picking up his drumsticks for the first time in 18 years. And the rest of the core ensemble - Adam Landry (Stateside, The Sways), John Davis (Superdrag) - are hardly your first-call Nashville session dudes.

But The Duel isn't exactly a rock record. It's simply the newest installment in the series of deeply personal and profoundly beautiful albums Moorer has made. It's a wee bit louder, that's all.

Listen to samples:

• I Ain't Giving Up On You
• Baby Dreamer
• Melancholy Polly
• Believe You Me
• One On The House
• All Aboard
• The Duel
• When Will You Ever Come Down
• Louise Is In The Blue Moon
• Once Upon A Time She Said
• Sing Me To Sleep