Mahori Kruang Sai Thai Ensemble Air Mail Music: Thailand CD

These factors play into Shocked's latest artistic explosion, a trilogy of albums recorded simultaneously during a sustained burst of overdriven creativity in December and January, each one hewing to a particular stylistic concept...sort of (let's allow the girl some poetic license here). Just as audaciously, she's releasing the three albums simultaneously. Most artists wouldn't even conceive of such an undertaking, let alone see it through - but Michelle Shocked isn't most artists. Dancing to the beat of her own wild heart and soul, she nimbly negotiates the tightrope that stretches between here and heaven, working without a net.

The trilogy is hardly a new concept to this single-minded artist. After all, she started her recording career with three stylistically distinct albums in Short Sharp Shocked (1988), Captain Swing (1989) and Arkansas Traveler (1992). Together, this set defined her wide-open milieu, on that encompassed rock, country, blues, folk, swing and all manner of indigenous American music. If she'd had her way, Shocked would've made and released these three records all at once, but that sort of over-arching ambition is seen as folly in the world of major labeldom. In time, Shocked's pioneering vision and the conventional music business proved themselves akin to oil and water, and these days she can do what she damn well pleases, as this new batch of platters so dramatically demonstrates.