Amanda Shires: Carrying Lightning, CD review Amanda Shires knows what life is like in the background. She is pictured on the cover of a 2008 Justin Townes Earle album and appeared in the movie Country Strong as one of the musicians backing the singer played by Gwyneth Paltrow. But she is front and centre stage with her solo album Carrying Lightning and it's where she deserves to be. Her playing is good - on fiddle, violin, ukulele and even whistling (there's a lovely old sound when it's done well as here) and her voice, with its West Texas twang, is expressive and deft. Carrying Lightning, recorded in her new base Nashville, has two talented co-producers in David Henry and Rod Picott (all three were also on Picott's fine album Welding Burns last year) and there is a fine cast of musicians including Neal Casal and Will Kimbrough on guitars. Sloe Gin is as languid and elegant as the drink and there is some marvellous songwriting and pedal steel melody work on the haunting When You Need A Train It Never Comes. Bees In The Shed is another treat. Shires, 30, whose first instrument was a pawn shop violin, sings only one cover song on the album. Interestingly, it is sequenced in the middle but fits in perfectly. It's a beautiful version of Detroit Or Buffalo, written in 1971 by Barbara Keith, a neglected, talented songwriter. Keith was a favourite of Lowell George and the writer Elmore Leonard and Shires's version of her song is another big plus on a crafted and very likeable album. Amanda Shires: Carrying Lightning (Silver Knife Records)