*** Julie Miller

BROKEN THINGS

(Hightone)

The Nashvillean-by-way-of-Austin Miller is a singer/songwriter with connections to such roots artists as Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Victoria Williams. Boasting a high, winsome voice as delicate as a piece of china and occasionally as cutting as a broken bottle, she established herself on 1997's Blue Pony, and she followed that up by touring (with her husband, "hard country" artist Buddy Miller) as an opening act for Emmylou.

On Broken Things she continues the well-traveled Americana path into ragged rock sounds and gentle melodies, with her ethereal voice streaking past the thunderchords on the edgy, hard-driving original "I Need You." She also displays a penchant for gentle, folky melodies on material of the sort that has prompted artists from jazz singer Jimmy Scott and country hit machine Brooks & Dunn to record her stuff. Harris and Williams add some crafty background harmonies, and Miller teams up with Earle for the finest ode to the wreckage caused by cocaine in some time, the lurching, evocative "Strange Lover."

-- Bill Kisliuk