Julie Roberts

Related Content

• Leo Kottke: "I just never thought it would be a job but it turned into one"
  January 27, 2012
• B.o.B and Gogol Bordello top sellers at local record stores
  May 3, 2010
• Mile Highlights: This week's concert news, local radio playlists and top album sales
  August 3, 2011
• Harry Tuft on being inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame
  February 9, 2012
• Festival Director Kathy Beeck's top picks for the Boulder International Film Fest
  February 16, 2011

More About

• Carolina-born Julie Roberts
• Shelby Lynne
• Bonnie Raitt
• Television
• Reality Shows

"Men and mascara always run," sings South Carolina-born Julie Roberts on the title track of this followup to her superb 2004 self-titled debut. One doubts that the 27-year-old stunner has endured many such problems, but she delivers the tune's hard-earned pearl of wisdom with a tone that's rich, resonant and resolute enough to convince you otherwise. Specks of Bonnie Raitt and Shelby Lynne glint in Roberts's bluesy, magnetic voice, which pours all over these mostly overpolished ballads -- built with the usual pedal steel, piano, fiddle and acoustic guitar -- transforming them from banal to bewitching. Opener "Paint and Pillows" confronts a cheating spouse with a clever metaphor worthy of Trading Spaces ("It's gonna take more than paint and pillows/New curtains on these windows/To cover up all the trash that you drug in"), while "Lonely Alone" poignantly comes to terms with romance gone sour: "I refuse to be with you and be forgotten/So this afternoon I thought why not just go/After all, I'm already lonely/I might as well be lonely alone."