Pam Tillis returns to the country fringe

Pam Tillis is on the long list of country artists who have joined the "formerly on a major label" club in recent years, and like many of its members, she has embraced her situation by looking to push her music beyond the boundaries imposed by major label expectations. Her professed aim with her new record, "Rhinestoned" (Stellar Cat), is to do something different than what you hear on country radio, something that (to her way of thinking) is more country (it isn't, necessarily). The country she has in mind isn't classic honky-tonk (she visited that on her last record, "It's All Relative," a tribute to the music of her father, Mel Tillis). Rather, it's something like the country she listened to when she was young -- Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons , Don Williams, Neil Young, and the like -- music that was on the fringes of the mainstream of the day. The music on "Rhinestoned" -- "Over My Head," which starts acoustic country and veers Celtic via pennywhistle and mandolin, the two-stepping "Band in the Window," the wry talking-blues story-song "Bettin' Money on Love" -- doesn't reprise the sound of those predecessors so much as their spirit, through Tillis's willingness to dwell in today's fringes. That willingness has also produced the best album of her career.

STUART MUNRO