Iris DeMent - The Way I Should

The Way I Should was nominated for a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Iris DeMent is back, and she's angry. You wouldn't know it from her sunny voice and upbeat arrangements, though, and that's the charm of this album. DeMent contrasts her tales of anguish and outrage with lustrous, open-sounding music that couches her lyrical darkness in a bed of subtle irony.

Backed by some of Nashville's finest, including Chuck Leavell, John Jennings and Steuart Smith, she presents an ambitious group of songs that mark her as a major new voice in country music. DeMent unveils a newly politicized outlook with Wasteland Of The Free and the antiwar sentiments of There's A Wall In Washington.

More personal issues of equal gravity are covered on the powerful Letter To Mom, where an adult reflects on a childhood trauma. The simple grace of DeMent's songwriting is most apparent on her collaboration with Merle Haggard, This Kind Of Happy.

• When My Mornin' Comes Around
• There's A Wall In Washington
• Wasteland Of The Free
• I'll Take My Sorrow Straight
• This Kind Of Happy
• The Way I Should
• Letter To Mom
• Keep Me God
• Quality Time
• Walkin' Home
• Trouble (with Delbert McClinton)