Local album

Mary Lou Lord, Got No Shadow (Work Group)

Into the warm

"Good, strong, warm, personal songs," is how veteran subway busker-turned-major label signee Mary Lou Lord described the material that made up Got No Shadow (Work Group), her big-time debut released last year to mostly rave reviews. Her Boston fans agreed, picking it as their local fave rave for '98 in a field that featured stiff competition from the likes of Come, the Willard Grant Conspiracy, the Shods, the Racketeers, and Karate. A legendarily infrequent composer whose good taste in covers and collaborators is at least as famous as her perplexing reticence when it comes to her own material, Lord scored big when she teamed up with one of her idols, Bevis Frond mastermind Nick Saloman, to write the bulk of Shadow (Saloman received writing credit on seven of the album's 13 tracks). But even though the disc's chiming first single, "Lights Are Changing," was a note-for-note Saloman cover, Lord proved she was no slouch with a tune either: Lord-penned tracks such as the tender, acoustic guitar-driven "Western Union Desperate" and the lilting country number "Seven Sisters" are plain drop-dead gorgeous.

-- Jonathan Perry

---

Mary Lou's Coffee House

---