Cochran does occasionally fall victim to those twin villains of contemporary pop music: needlessly noisy arrangements and the ridiculous oversinging they encourage. Thanks to a little invention called the microphone, no singer since Al Jolson has needed to sacrifice human-scale emotion just to be heard. Yet by the end of some first verses here, Cochran is already pegging the needle at full lung power. Consequently, the potential intimacy the recording studio affords her -- and that lines such as I swear that I'm all right, but in the middle of the night, I cry demand -- is sometimes nearly wasted.
Still, there's no puzzle here that Cochran won't solve by woodshedding a bit longer with the singles of her namesake hero Tammy Wynette. Indeed, her debut's hands-down keeper is "What I Learned From Loving You," where Cochran and producer Blake Chancey (Dixie Chicks) collaborate with Wynette's longtime producer, Billy Sherrill. Surrounded by subtle yet dramatic pedal steel and piano and a brooding Bergen White string arrangement, Cochran travels a hard road from whisper to scream and back again. It's a journey that gives her all the room she needs to express the complexity of grown-up broken hearts.
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