“Seven hundred thousand rednecks – that’s what it takes to get to the top,” yells Nashville singer Nikki Lane, having calculated exactly where she wants to be. After working with producers including the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, her third album sees her take more control, along with boyfriend Jonathan Tyler, for a boisterous collection of firecracking “outlaw country.” Lane’s fiery, Loretta Lynn/Emmylou Harris-style vocals deliver tales of life on the road, smalltown gossips and female empowerment. She sassily sings of breaking hearts in every town, but Send the Sun alludes to the depressions caused by conducting a relationship via telephone. The beautiful, pedal steel-laden Forever Lasts Forever mourns a failed marriage. It makes for a convincingly personal but still universal portrait. Trading postmodern sheen for a more traditional sound could help attract the support from country radio stations that Lane needs, in a crowded field, to achieve a mainstream breakthrough. But even if not, “There ain’t no one gonna make me stop.”
