Pain to Kill Terri Clark

Mercury Nashville

Wait for Me

Susan Tedeschi… Pain to Kill Terri Clark

Mercury Nashville

Wait for Me

Susan Tedeschi

Tone-Cool/Artemis

Juice Newton had a big country-pop hit called “Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard on Me” about 21 years ago. Maybe Canadian country singer Terri Clark should have considered a cover for her fifth CD, Pain to Kill.

She’s in love with someone she swears she’ll never cheat on or leave on the top 10 single “I Just Wanna Be Mad,” but the louse made poor Terri so angry one night she’s going to need a whole day to stew before she can offer forgiveness. She has some pain to kill on the title track and is leaving another she’s not meant to be with on “I Just Called to Say Goodbye.” Heck, her “bones are breaking from all the weight” she’s carrying maintaining a relationship in which she’s at “three Mississippi” and counting.

And those are the up-tempo country songs on the album’s first half.

Still, not bad at all.

But Pain to Kill becomes truly special when she stops aiming her pain at mainstream country radio and co-writes her own deeper, more reflective acoustic-based songs to close out the CD’s second half. Alan Jackson’s producer, Keith Stegall, produces those songs with his usual accent on traditionalism, but it’s Clark’s intelligent delivery that turns the gentle “The First to Fall” and “God and Me” — her take on what religion means to her — into her finest performances yet.

Four years ago, blues singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi scored a surprise Best New Artist Grammy nomination. Wait for Me is well-named because crafting this follow-up had to wait for her son’s birth.

The result, featuring five tracks produced by the late Tom Dowd (his last work), is promising.

Much like Bonnie Raitt, whom she resembles vocally and stylistically, Tedeschi, who writes some of her material, is adept at branching out by including simple pop love ballads (“Wrapped in the Arms of Another” — just voice and piano) and folk (a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”) amid the greasy blues-rock workouts (“Hampmotized,” featuring guest guitarist Colonel Bruce Hampton — hence, the title).

The album lacks a solid center, but Tedeschi’s good. Give her a shot.