This impressive debut album comes after just three years of musicianship.  Sweeney had originally planned on acting, even leaving her Longview, TX, hometown to try to make it in the City, but eventually returned to Texas, where her beautiful voice and the gift of a guitar led her into the Austin and roadhouse music scenes.  She contributes three songs to this album, which also features a duet with Jim Lauderdale.
This album is firmly rooted in Texas music, but it shows the inadequacies of the pop-country/alt-country dialectic.  Featuring songs by both Lauderdale and Emily (Erwin) Robison of the Dixie Chicks and covering both Iris DeMent’s "Mama’s Opry" and Lacy J. Dalton’s 1983 hit "16th Avenue," this album can’t seem to make up its mind what its ambition is.  The opening track, Lauderdale’s "Refresh My Memory" could probably fit into the mainstream country format.  Others songs, such as Tim Carroll’s "If I Could," channel Gram Parsons, or show why she’s opened for Dwight Yoakam and Dale Watson.
Instead of suffering for this diversity, however, this album pulls the seemingly disparate styles of country into a compelling and cohesive record that would fit comfortably in the collections of fans with wide variety of tastes in country and Americana.
Joel Luber is a student in the masters program in American Studies at the University of Kansas.  He studies popular music in American culture, focusing on country and "roots" music.  When he’s not engrossed in esoteric critical theory, he keeps a vaguely alt-country-oriented audioblog Postmodern Sounds in Country and Western Music.