Monument

 

The devil must have spent a little more time on the Dixie Chicks.  They're the most fun you can have on country radio these days, bringing a sisterly zest to their celebrations of hell-raising country gals who know how to rip out a man's heart and use it to fix a flat.  Over-dressed but never threateningly glamorous, these Astroturf cowgirls are country's answer to TLC, representing the Southern mall sisterhood without shying away from two-stepping on the menfolk's toes.

 

Fly may seem like a premature sequel to the Chicks' sextuple-platinum major-label debut, Wide Open Spaces - which is still on the charts - but that's the country schedule for you.  The Chicks are also obviously eager to reassure their country fans that they're not going pop.  So Fly has the same slick studio twang as Wide Open Spaces.  Natalie Maines sings lead, sharing vocals with the group's real-life sisters, Martie Seidel, who plays fiddle and mandolin, and Emily Robison, who plays banjo and dobro.  Country bands who play their own licks and write their own best material are rare enough even before you consider the estrogen factor, but Fly shows that the Chicks are still wisely doing things their own way.

 

"Ready to Run" sets the emotional and musical tone of the album, revving up the guitars to a graceful Celtic motif as Maines sings about an independent woman who knows it's time to hit the road when she hears her mama say that she looks good in white.  Most of the songs hang around the same troubled borders of freedom and true love.  In the beautiful ballas "Cowboy Take Me Away," the Chicks long for a rugged lover boy to take them into the wilderness; in the honky-tonk stomp "Sin Wagon," they put on their red dresses and hit the skins for some "mattress dancing" and "twelve-ounce nutrition."  Like true country singers, the Chicks sin big and suffer big, cursing themselves for their ordinary compromises and cursing the world for not giving them enough room to dance.  Their female voices breathe new life into outlaw cliches, as in "Don't Waste Your Heart," an unregretful kiss-off to a good-hearted man in love with a good-timing woman.  "It's funny how the girls get burned," Maines muses, "And honey, as far as I'm concerned / The tables have turned."

 

The only real flaw here is that the Chicks leave too much of the spotlight to songwriting pros.  In Nashville, writing your own hits is seem as just plumb selfish, and the Chicks must have wanted to prove that they were team players by cutting pros like Matraca Berg, Patty Griffin, and Jim Lauderdale in on the action.  But the Chicks' originals are the best here by a mile, and all the other clinkers - such as the cutesy "Goodbye Earl" - come from outsiders.  The best original songs on Fly move on in country tradition with peppier beats and livlier vocals, and while the Chicks may not be organic enough for some tastes, what with their punk vinyl and fun fur, they make the competition sound like kid stuff.  The Dixie Chicks are country radio's gift to the world; they make the dirty South a little dirtier with every song.