Albumkritik

Down-home family-style harmony singing is making a comeback in Nashville. The Judds, mother Naomi and daughter Wynonna, may be the hottest new act in country music, and the four Forester Sisters, from Lookout Mountain, Georgia – they only quit their day jobs in the summer of 1984 – had a Number One country single last summer, "I Fell in Love Again Last Night."

The best songs on the Foresters' debut LP are medium-tempo concoctions (like "I Fell in Love Again Last Night") with heavy backbeat and high-recognition hooks. The catchiest is "Something Tells Me," with its ingeniously irregular line lengths and offbeat accents, sweetened with steel guitar and succulent four-part harmonies. All of the sisters get solos, but most go to Kathy, whose smoky alto is heard on "Something Tells Me" and "I Fell in Love Again Last Night." The most expressive singer is Kim, whose throatiness and adventurous phrasing on "Dixie Man" make her sound oddly like the late Lowell George. But even Kim sometimes seems shy and tentative, and all suffer from mushy enunciation.

Two songs are downright weird: "Yankee Don't Go Home," a Southern girl's love song to a Northern boy, is an extended Civil War metaphor ("When you made your advance/I knew my heart was headed for defeat"), and the earnest delivery suggests it wasn't meant to be funny; "Reckless Night" veers off into questionable theology (during some alfresco hanky-panky, "souls are lost, never to be found again"). But even these are insidiously tuneful and sung with innocent conviction. While the Foresters need to sharpen their skills, they also need to hang on to that innocence. This record shows they could have it all or lose it all.

The Judds already have it all: the trick now is to keep it. On Rockin' with the Rhythm, their third LP, they're consolidating their gains and cautiously stepping out. Their tense harmonies are still complemented by a clean mix of acoustic guitars, bass, drums – and little else but a trace of dobro or pedal steel. Wynonna, 21, has been called the greatest woman country singer since Patsy Cline. Her voice ranges from husky alto to choirboy soprano to hot, raspy growl to piercing rebel yell.And she's using these effects with increasing ease, control and taste.

There are some modest innovations on Rockin' with the Rhythm: a nylonstring guitar here, a jew's-harp there – even some funky riffs, rock & roll hand-claps and dance-club rhythms. In this mode, the Judds could never be mistaken for the Forester Sisters – but they could never be mistaken for the Pointer Sisters, either. None of the new songs has the instant, drop-dead impact of "Why Not Me" or "Love Is Alive" from their previous LP, but they tend to grow on you. The only turkey is a cover of Lee Dorsey's "Working in the Coal Mine." Wynonna is not convincing as an oppressed miner: these days, of course, there's no reason a woman shouldn't be "hauling coal by the ton," but she sounds silly singing "oops" in a Betty Boop falsetto. The Judds should guard against girlish affectation; their cuteness is sometimes a little forced.

The most winning song is probably "Grandpa (Tell Me 'bout the Good Old Days)." The Norman Rockwell Eden it posits ("Families really bow their heads to pray/Daddies really never go away") makes it an ideal anthem for self-righteous Reaganites. But that vision is also heartbreaking – Who, after all, wants daddies to go away? – especially when set to an arresting melody and sung with the same kind of conviction that saves the Forester Sisters' equally discomfiting songs. When home-style music makes it to Nashville, that conviction (or the ability to fake it) finally counts for more than cold expertise – and partly redeems some dubious politics. (RS 462)

DAVID GATES

Lesen Sie mehr auf rollingstone.com