The Time Has Come

by Thom JurekRest assured, it's highly unlikely that Martina McBride will ever issue another record that sounds like The Time Has Come. With co-producers Paul Worley and Ed Seay (who also worked with her on her breakthrough, The Way That I Am), McBride delivers a set of neo-traditionalist country and progressive country-inflected folk songs that showcase her ability to get to the heart of a song and turn it into something communicative and thought provoking. With a host of Nashville superpickers and backing vocalists from Garth Brooks and Carl Jackson to Kathy Chiavola, McBride turns in intense performances of the Emory Gordy/Jim Rushing classic "Cheap Whiskey" for a neo-honky tonk feel, as well as the stompin' nightclub country of the Longacre/Wilson-penned title track and the Lonnie Wilson/Charlotte Wilson/Herbert Wilson weeper "Losing You Feels Good." The album ends with Gretchen Peters' "When You're Old," a meditative love song delivered with the empathy, grace, and elegance that have become McBride's trademark. This is a very solid debut, even if it resembles none of her other work.