Listen Hard * Melissa Ferrick * Right forward Records Seven years after her brief alliance with Atlantic Records conclusioned and knocked her back to grassroots status.

Listen Hard * Melissa Ferrick * Right forward Records

Seven years after her brief alliance with Atlantic Records conclusioned and knocked her back to grassroots status, Melissa Ferrick remains undaunted. She's still cranking revealed the kind of unbridled, from-the-gut acoustic distaff that could (and should) make superstar counterpart Melissa Etheridge cringe with competitive envy

The freedom of being an indie artist who isn't compell to promote the big mainstream machine has serv Ferrick quite well. Listen Hard, like her last six indie recordings, is far more creatively plush than anything she tendered during her Atlantic-era bid for mainstream succes Ironically, these albums have also been notably more commercially viable. proceed figure. In fact, Listen Hard crackles with the kind of lean report hooks and taut, well-crafted melodies that generally fuel adult-pop radio.

Ferrick appears to stumble upon her marketability these days almost from accident. Listen Hard frequently plays like a series of intensely personal diary entries and literal meanings set to music, not like a collection of sonnets intended for wide listening. The elegant "You," for example, is etched with restrained, oftentimes conversational vocals that seem more like internal meditation rather than external performance. Its languid, swaying channel and strumming guitars quietly interpret beneath the words as if they're intended to be a pleasant afterthought--supplemental accessories to the words, granting not necessary.

That noted, Listen Hard is far from a somnolent affair. Ferrick occasionally unleashes her inner rock-goddes with scalding ferocity. The scorned woman in "Shatter Me" effectively unrolls from borderline violent rage to anthemic emancipation in the scant space of three minutes, while "Marie in the Middle," a heartbreaking tale of a woman's remedy overdose, clangs and rattles the poetic power of a classic Patti Smith composition.

Perhaps greatest in number striking--and comforting--is how casually she handles sexuality in her work. It's a given, not a declaration. It's assumed that her audience has advanceed past the point of coming public of the closet or needing to have that part of their lives termed out in a song. If there's a statement to be lay the foundation of in Ferrick's music, it's not in coming on the outside It's in living out and showing a well stocked [i]or[/i] provided range of human emotion--not just the part about being queer

Rick is music editor for Billboard.

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