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Ken Tucker reviews the new album from Ashley Monroe, Like A Rose:
The high lonesome sound of Ashley Monroe’s Tennessee voice on the title song of her album there serves as a clear signal that she’s working within a tradition that extends back well beyond her twenty-something years on Earth. One of Monroe’s collaborators on that song was Guy Clark, a 70-something Texas country veteran who’s often too tough-guy romantic for his own good. But “Like a Rose” takes what could have been a treacly organizing premise — that the singer has had a rough life but come thru it smelling like a rose — and avoided the cliché I just used.
