Ever since the 90s, I've been putting together an annual list of the year's best albums. Trying to rank them is completely subjective and a little ridiculous, but whenever I question the wisdom of this absurdly herculean task, an album like this one comes along and reminds me why I make the effort. You might think that after ten albums, a film score and a handful of tracks scattered across the internet, Jenifer Jackson would have settled on one particular style. But that would be too easy. She likes to reinvent herself, so, the cd you are holding right now, her eleventh, is where she goes deeper than ever into the Americana roots she loves so much. Jenifer has always had a thing for vintage country sounds - for example, you may remember Trouble Fire, a country ballad as exquisitely sad as they get, from Jenifer's third album, Birds. Making Austin, deep in the heart of Texas, her home base, was an auspicious move that fascilliated the creation of this charming, funny, poignant, meticulously crafted collection of songs. Great songwriters never have to look far to find great musicians. The Austin-based cast of characters here have a chemistry and and unselfconsciously joyous connection to the music as direct and intense as any group Jennifer has ever assembled, to rival her first teenage band in Boston (with Paul Bryan and Jay Bellerose), and her New York band with guitar genius Oren Bloedow. So, it's no surprise that for the first time ever, Jenifer includes songs here that she's written with others. There's the deliciously aphoristic Heart with a Mind of Its Own, a classic country co-write with Dickie Lee Erwin. And Kullen Fuchs, who plays a small vanload of instruments on this, co-wrote the artfully arranged duet Paint It Gold as well as the gently visionary anthem White Medicine Cloud. And the rest of this is the Jenifer Jackson we know and love: no wasted words, no wasted notes, a voice and a vision which can be as tender as they are resolute. And fun too! The countrypolitan chamber swing of Texas Sunrise; the way the pulsing string section parts the waters for Kullen's recorder on All Around; that jaunty walk down Phil Spencer's bass into a counterintuitive chord change as In Summer begins; and the elegant handoff from cello, to accordion, to bubbly mariachi horns in On My Mind are just a small handful of the boundlessly imaginative touches here that reveal themselves with repeated listening. You are in for a real treat with this record. Alan Young New York Music Daily November 2013