A confident leap forward from her swell debut, Long Island Shores is less Nashville and more New York: songs for noshing bagels and washing ‘em down with hot deli coffee. Urbane and sophisticated a la Roseanne Cash, yet with a sonic debt to the dreamy, filigreed pop of the Sundays (on the gorgeous “Please Stay�), Mindy Smith hasn’t completely abandoned the twang of her adopted Music City home base, just simply taken fuller advantage of its musical melting pot. Half the compositions here are co-writes, and one is a flat-out cover (of a little known number by John Scott Sherrill), yet Long Island Shores feels like a fully realized and personal statement, yearning and at the same time grounded. Smith also knows how to relax and kick off her musical shoes, exemplified by the playful duet, “What If the World Stops Turning?� with Buddy Miller.
Larry O. Dean
Release date: October 10, 2006
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