Sweet Right Here

SHeDAISY's third official full-length is a product crafted finer than Waterford crystal. Like anything at the macro end of the gleaming Hat City sweatband, there's a heapin' helping of puffy filler. However, the harmonizing Osborn sisters have quite a bit of charm, and Sweet Right Here does showcase some fine songwriting from Kristyn. Led by the strong first single "Passenger Seat" (full of evocative lines like "Vinyl seat soft from the heat of the sun"), the album is a seamless mixture of themes and tempos familiar to the pop-country audience. Throughout, the sisters are a little bit of Dixie Chick sass, a lot of womanly Shania confidence ("360º of You" could be an outtake from Come On Over), and quite cognizant of Nashville's success with the lite rock crossover, as the piano ballad "Without a Sound" proves. (Is that Kristyn Osborn or Vanessa Williams singing?) Collaborations with songwriting pros like Connie Harrington for the aforementioned "Seat" and "360º" and John Shanks (the blah missing-you number "Come Home Soon") are nice enough, but it's Kristyn's work with Jason Deere that's the most resonant, retaining that stage-glitter sheen but gaining some purchase with lyrical bite and an adequate appropriation of time for the contributions of Kassidy and Kelsi Osborn. In this contempo country world, it's the details that matter, since the gaggle of studio cats backing you up ain't going to sound that much different on the next songbird's record. Proving that, the Osborns sound great when their harmonies do find a way to the top, and those little lyrical specifics make a whole barrel of difference. "Heard you're moving to Denver," Osborn sings in "Love Goes On," while the slick honky tonk of "Good Together (Bucket and Chicken)" references dancing outlaw and Appalachian fringe celebrity Jessco White. (The latter track also features some nice fiddle work from Jonathan Yudkin.) Sweet Right Here's best moment might be "Don't Worry 'Bout a Thing." A sonic cousin to Tim McGraw's "Something Like That," SHeDAISY takes the song's message to heart, loosening up and having a good time instead of sticking mightily to Music City convention. "Ever found your last record in the bargain bin?" they sing, before "blah blah"ing their way through a pre-chorus (seriously!) and admitting that, behind closed doors, everyone has a little junk in the trunk. Though it settles SHeDAISY even more comfortably in their pillowy Disney (via Lyric Street) niche, Sweet Right Here does have enough genuine moments to make it the Osborns' own.