The Breakthrough Review

Be Without You is the achievement here, a mid tempo devotional built on a soft guitar figure that stayed on radio for the better part of a year and became the record people file next to her nineties singles. It works because the singing is completely relaxed and the writing is specific about the unglamorous parts of staying with somebody. Around it, the album is well built and slightly overstuffed.

Enough Cryin' has fire. Take Me As I Am is one of the sturdiest things she recorded in that decade. The cover of a well known rock ballad with U2 is better than it has any right to be. But seventeen tracks is too many, the guest verses feel contractual, and the back half repeats the front. The bigger question the album raises and does not answer is what a singer defined by pain does once the pain has lifted. Her answer is craft, and craft carries it a long way without ever quite thrilling.