Record Rack

*** Martina McBride, “Emotion,” RCA. With her fifth album, this Kansas pixie with pipes of steel turns in several knockout performances of songs by Patty Griffin (“Good Bye”), Gretchen Peters (“This Uncivil War”) and Tom Douglas-Buzz Cason (“Love’s the Only House”). She occasionally falls short trying to belt messages from the mountaintop Shania-Faith style, and the emotional leaps from one tune to the next are jarring in places, but on balance she has taken a bold step away from the country-pop pack.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.