rivercityrecordshop

Reviews:

Amy Rigby is pop's most convincing everywoman. A bohemian divorcee and mother who logged time in the tongue-in-cheek early '90s New York City girl group the Shams, Rigby sings with a tremor that signifies both vulnerability and goofiness. She's extremely fond of pun-filled sobriquets (the Shams' 1993 EP was titled Sedusia, while Rigby's first two solo discs were called Diary of a Mod Housewife and Middlescence). And her songwriting is as sharply observed and fall-down-funny as anyone's this side of the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt.

Til the Wheels Fall Off, Rigby's fourth album, isn't her best-that's still Mod Housewife, or in a pinch last year's excellent 18 Again, which compiles the highlights of her first three discs (including 2000's The Sugar Tree). But it's close enough. Rigby is still mining tiny details of everyday life for observations that feel anything but ordinary, from feeling the generation gap encroach as she watches her daughter turn into a teenager in "Don't Ever Change" to negotiating "The Deal" with a not-very-suitable suitor. (As she puts it in "Shopping Around," "I'm getting older/ I'm getting wiser/ But am I getting laid?") And if you have any interest in how sex, aging, and coupledom work in tandem, the way she considers squeezing you in between the PTA and CNN in the beyond-perfect "Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again?" ("We used to be triple-X rated/ Look at us now, so domesticated/ Don't you hate it?") will have you falling down laughing.