Pain to Kill (CD - 2003)

Personnel: Terri Clark (vocals); Biff Watson (acoustic guitar); Keith Stegall (electric guitar, harmonica); Brent Mason, B.James Lowry, Kenny Greenberg (electric guitar); Paul Franklin (steel guitar); Mark Casstevens, Bruce Watkins (banjo); Stuart Duncan (mandolin, fiddle); Aubrey Haynie, Jonathan Yudkin (fiddle); Gary Prim (piano); Steve Nathan (keyboards); Glen Worf (bass); Lonnie Wilson (drums); Wes Hightower, Liana Manis, Vince Gill, Leslie Satcher, John Wesley Ryles, Stephony Smith (background vocals).

Recorded at Ocean Way, The Tracking Room and Sound Station Studios, Nashville, Tennessee.

Digitally remastered using HDCD technology.

The most impressive thing about PAIN TO KILL is the way it dances around genre boundaries. "I Just Wanna Be Mad" neatly meshes a bluegrass-derived fiddle riff with pop-rock production while offering one side of an ultimately benign lover's quarrel. The title track is a roadhouse rocker that kicks off with some dirty, Stones-like guitar, and "Three Mississippi" comes off like a cross between Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter. While Terri Clark is surely no one's idea of a country traditionalist, she eschews the pop excess of the Faiths and Shanias of the world; PAIN TO KILL is conspicuously absent of precious, drama-filled diva ballads. Instead, Clark offers a straight-ahead amalgam of pop, light rock, and mainstream country, delivered in a direct, honest voice. minimize