Shawn Colvin: Live

Shawn Colvin is both a peerless veteran songwriter and an acoustic road warrior whose resilient voice has miraculously survived the rigors of endless nightclubs and touring to twirl in chilling delight. This 15-track live album, her second, recorded during a three night solo acoustic stand at Yoshi’s jazz club in San Francisco, includes just about every career highlight you could ask for. Her most familiar material, “Sunny Came Home,” “Polaroids,” “Diamonds In the Rough,” sit next to her excellent interpretations of the Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” all brought together in perfect intimacy with Colvin’s seamless finger-picking and relaxed delivery. Colvin isn’t one to vary her approach or reinterpret the past. These are faithful renditions made somewhat stronger by the directness of the approach, since Colvin’s songs hinge on her sterling lyrical acumen. (She is the rare lyricist who reads as powerful on page without accompaniment.) So it’s easy to curl up with “Ricochet In Time” and “Shotgun Down the Avalanche” as if they were good books.