Sugarland, Sweeter Than Ever

Georgia Duo Expands The Borders of Country With 'Love on the Inside'

If, as some have argued, mainstream country is the new pop, Sugarland's music offers as good a reason as any to embrace the transition. Granted, some might find singer Jennifer Nettles's incessant "oo-ooing" on their current single, "All I Want to Do," a little grating. But the effervescent hooks and steadfast grooves that suffuse the remaining 12 tracks on "Love on the Inside," the Georgia duo's new album, are well nigh irresistible.

Once again enlisting Nashville producer Byron Gallimore, Nettles and her bandmate Kristian Bush buttress the folk and pop sound of their first two albums with liberal amounts of down-home rock and soul. "Love," a soaring ballad, features Edge-inspired atmospherics and bears a striking resemblance to U2's "One," while "Take Me as I Am," a bracing statement of self-affirmation, oozes arena-rock swagger and crunch. "What I'd Give" is steamy country soul. "Fall Into Me," off the CD's Deluxe Fan Edition, gets a lift from elegiac Dobro and Southern rock guitar on the chorus.

There's no shortage of straight-ahead country here, either. With its Appalachian-style harmonies, "We Run" is a rural idyll worthy of Dolly Parton, "Already Gone" a waltzing piano- and mandolin-driven ballad, "Joey" a rootsy monument to regret.

Bush's strumming mandolin is all over the record, although more often evoking the playing of R.E.M.'s Peter Buck than some bluegrass-steeped Nashville studio pro. Nettles's drawling alto -- strapping one moment, sultry the next -- rounds out the duo's signature sound, its rich down-home timbre rendering believable the album's sturdy meditations on the ins and outs of romance.

"When . . . the storm clouds overhead won't shed any rain to quench your thirst/I wanna be the one you reach for first," Nettles sings, making the most of the smart internal rhyme of "shed" and "overhead" in "Fall Into Me." When, in "What I'd Give," she wonders what it would be like to get to know the man she pines for, it's with womanly knowing, not frothy infatuation. Picturing herself at the breakfast table with her would-be lover, she sounds a distinctly adult note after the fashion of Marilyn McCoo in "One Less Bell to Answer" or Dusty Springfield in "Breakfast in Bed."

Such maturity isn't surprising coming from a singer in her early 30s who was working the Georgia club circuit for years before she, Bush and their former bandmate Kristen Hall hooked up with Universal Music's Nashville division. It's also just the sort of seasoning that enables Nettles to pull off the campy "Steve Earle." Equal parts mash note and send-up, the cantering romp has her dreaming of becoming the latest bride of the irascible troubadour, someone for whom "fallin' in love is a pilgrim sport."

The studio where Sugarland made the album, Atlanta's Southern Tracks Recording, likely also was an inspiration. With a client roster that has included everyone from Jerry Reed and the Indigo Girls to Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M., Southern Tracks has gained a reputation, over the past four decades, for attracting artists like Sugarland with expansive musical palettes.

DOWNLOAD THESE:"Love," "What I'd Give," "Steve Earle"