Consumer Guide Album

Bobbie Cryner: Girl of Your Dreams [MCA, 1996]
Having gone nowhere with the best pure country album by any woman this decade, Cryner cuts a purer country album--nicer, sweeter, more male-identified despite "I Didn't Know My Own Strength," an all-purpose declaration of independence she should submit to AA. And in case you doubt she's a giant killer, she leads off with "Son of a Preacher Man," which I thought Dusty and Aretha owned, and makes the sex sound like fun instead of sin. Cryner is a terrific writer--"Preacher Man" excepted, the five songs with her name on them are the five sharpest, with the devastating "You'd Think He'd Know Me Better" her subtlest addition to Nashville's family values campaign. But the reason she expects to take over the world is that's she's an equally focused singer--even more so with Tony Brown inducing her to add flashes of clarity and infusions of warmth to her natural smoke and sass. A-