Customer Reviews

Outskirts of You

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Austin-based Libbi Bosworth hasn't received the sort of press attention afforded some of her more famous citymates, but her CD debut harbors the best qualities of that city's tremendous musical outpouring. Her songwriting is personal and affecting, while her voice stretches from Wanda Jackson style honky-tonk to 50s countrypolitan ballads.

Producer Earl B. Freedom surrounds her with sounds that are at once vintage in their arrangement, and modern in the clarity of their recording. The balance gives Bosworth's songs the colorations of classic country without being slavishly devoted to retro trappings. The swinging "Don't Call Me Crazy" and the perfect-for-a-slow-dance-at-the-prom "Outskirts of You," are terrific nods to the past, complete with Jordanaire-styled backing vocals.

Her best songs, including "My Old Man," "Up All Night" (covered by Kelly Willis, but sounding even better from the songwriter's own mouth) and "I Won't Let Your Memory Drag Me Down," resound with the sort first-person imagery that makes country music great.

Fans of Kelly Willis and Sara Evans would find much to enjoy here!

This is the best album by a female country singer I have ever heard and I would walk up to Heather Myles and say that to her face. Libbi Bosworth was able to give us only two albums--this one and 2001's "Libbiville," also first-rate. But this stunning "Outskirts of You" is one of four or five albums from among several thousand that completely changes the week one first hears it, because other activities are pushed aside for multiple replays of these gripping, fascinating songs, most of which Bosworth wrote.

Do whatever you have to do--pay whatever you have to pay--to add this to your collection. I would not take two Daytona 500 tickets for mine.