Playlist: The Very Best of Patty Loveless

構成数 : 1枚
合計収録時間 : 00:49:36
Liner Note Author: Gillian Gaar. Photographers: Harrison McClary; Pam Francis; Dave Gorton. Sony's Playlist series is a 21st century approach to the best-of compilation. The packaging is eco-friendly and the sets offer both CD-quality music and downloadable MP3 files. In addition, instead of liner notes and photos in a printed booklet, they are provided as extra material on the CD itself. Budget-priced, they attempt to provide a well-rounded view of each artist, in studio and live settings, with well-known songs and albums. Patty Loveless' volume contains some of her most beloved songs, yet there are some questions. There are two tracks each from Only What I Feel, Trouble with the Truth, On Your Way Home, and Dreamin' My Dreams. All are excellent choices. But the only inclusion from the acclaimed and enduring Mountain Soul is a painful oversight, especially when the lone choice is the set's only rote song: "I Know You're Married (But I Love You Still)," a by-the-numbers duet with Travis Tritt. It doesn't delve nearly as deep into Loveless' vast well of emotion because her singing partner isn't capable of going there with her. Virtually any other track would have been sufficient, and there should have been more than one. The selection of "Can't Get Enough" from Classics is only here because it was the lead-off (then new) track from a greatest-hits collection. The modern country rockabilly of "I Try to Think About Elvis," from When Fallen Angels Fly, is hardly the album's best cut, but it is a good one. "Like Water Into Wine" is a fitting inclusion from Long Stretch of Lonesome, and suffices as one of her signature ballads, but an additional cut from it would have served this set better. The inclusion of "Three Little Babies," from the Chieftains' Further Down the Old Plank Road: The Nashville Sessions from 2003, is a nice touch, though "Wine Women and Song, from the extremely spotty various-artist's compilation Tribute to Tradition, could have just as easily been left off to include something from one of her own albums. While this is a more than fair representation of Loveless' considerable gifts as a singer -- one Nashville has yet to fully acknowledge -- her own hits collections serve her legacy, and the listener, far better. ~ Thom Jurek