Men & Mascara

There's no sophomore slump here for Julie Roberts, whose second release is, if anything, richer and more powerful than her well-received debut. Credit the uniformly strong material, with not a throwaway among the eleven tracks, and four of the songs cowritten by Roberts. There's not a happy song among them, either, except for the nostalgic "Too Damn Young," about when love was fresh in a teenage way that it will never be again on the rest of the older-and-wiser material. The opening "Paint and Pillows" tells of a wife wronged by a cheating husband, and a hurt that can't be masked by window dressing. "First to Never Know" and "Lonely Alone" find a woman on the run from a relationship gone cold, while "A Bridge That's Burning" sings of the refusal to become the other woman. Best of all is the title track, through which the bittersweet voice of experience warns that "men and mascara always run." Though Roberts has the glamour-girl look of a Faith Hill, the Southern bluesiness of her vocal phrasing is closer to Lucinda Williams, and the fiddle and steel guitar that dominate Byron Gallimore's production show country music making few concessions to pop. --Don McLeese