*** Kate Campbell

MOONPIE DREAMS

(Compass)

This follow-up to Campbell's well-received 1995 debut, Songs from the Levee, is an even better collection -- more focused, and with a broader musical palette. Campbell is more Southern than country; her sensibility is small-town literary rather than suburban, and the characters and locales her songs chronicle are evocative of Southern change and decline. Her musical influences range from Muscle Shoals-like R&B to the Band to acoustic country folk.

Even when the arrangements are contemporary, however, the songs are rendered timeless by the vintage instruments and Campbell's clear, unaffected vocals, pure of line with a thick Mississippi twang, sort of halfway between Iris DeMent and Emmylou Harris. There's not a single clunker among the dozen well-crafted originals here. And "See Rock City," which chronicles the emotional life of a young woman yearning to break free of her small-town nexus, is the sort of intelligent, boomer-oriented country pop that could gain Campbell some Mary Chapin Carpenter-like success.

-- Seth Rogovoy