Consumer Guide Album

Mary McCaslin: Way Out West [Philo, 1974]
Without self-dramatization--she favors plain melodies and commonplace imagery and her singing is gamely unhistrionic--this woman explores Joni Mitchell's territory with equal intelligence, more charm, and no drums. Her album is a rough song cycle in which she responds to the footloose incorrigibility of the musicians she loves by getting in a car with a guitar herself--without romanticizing the process. A-