Shawn Colvin "All Fall Down" CD

On All Fall Down, Shawn Colvin's third Nonesuch disc, the singer-songwriter enlisted as producer her longtime friend and occasional band-mate, guitarist Buddy Miller. The sessions, at Miller's home studio in Nashville, Tennessee, were distinguished, as Colvin describes them, by a kind of back-porch bonhomie. An open-door policy encouraged drop-ins from a number of stellar musicians, including singers Emmylou Harris, Allison Krauss, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Jakob Dylan as well as fiddle-player extraordinaire Stuart Duncan. The easygoing atmosphere, however, did not prevent the incisive Colvin, on these 11 new tracks, from examining some hard cold truths. Artfully pared-down arrangements mirror the compelling emotional directness of Colvin's songs, in which she addresses the dissolution of a relationship with the sort of dry-eyed candor that has long been a hallmark of her work. The material often took shape with Colvin performing live in the studio, singing and playing acoustic guitar