Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
May 7, 2013She hasn't entirely left the Chicks behind, but Maines has grown into something newly dynamic, and entirely her own.
-
May 13, 2013Her return to music is a quiet triumph. For the most part she has flown the Chicks’ country coop for this solo debut, which is a well-curated mostly covers affair.
-
May 7, 2013Mother is a good, at times even great, start to a solo recording identity for Natalie Maines, but lacks only in the listener’s greatest desire, to learn more about Maines.
-
May 29, 2013While there isn’t a strict cohesion tying the record’s ten tunes together sonically, an attempted theme would likely have distracted Maines in the effort to spread her wings and show off a bit. Offering up a stylistic sampler provides a portrait of an accomplished artist setting out on her own.
-
May 9, 2013The album is at its strongest when, as on its centerpiece cover of Jeff Buckley’s otherworldy “Lover You Should’ve Come Over”, Maines’ extraordinary vocals are allowed to run freely over material that is up to her power.
-
May 23, 2013Maines makes each track her own, Patty Griffin's "Silver Bells" as pointed as any Dixie Chicks tune, but we're hungry for her rough-and-tumble songs.
-
May 7, 2013However welcome it may be to hear her voice again, it's ultimately her decision to play things so safe that keeps Mother from being a wholly satisfying return.
-
May 7, 2013While Maines' singing is the glue that holds everything together, the set's overly polished production and the scattershot curation of the material makes it feel like more like just a haphazard collection of songs than a cohesive album.
-
May 7, 2013Too often, the music feels a bit limp, and the buttery harmony backups of her fellow Dixie Chicks are sorely missed. But there are some surprises.
-
May 7, 2013All very authentic and in the room.