Ten years and four albums deep into a career while many singers her age are just getting started, has now been through enough in her life to fully relate to all the subject matter she works with. Despite the title of the album and all her talk about making a more personal set of songs than before, she isn't credited as a songwriter on any of these ten songs -- all the more peculiar given that the songs she co-wrote on 2003's were hardly problematic. She evidently went through some more storms and significant life experiences after she last recorded (including the birth of her son and a perhaps predictably rocky relationship with ), and though she wasn't involved in the songwriting process, she certainly sounds more connected to her material. After the obligatory club track -- the decent but ultimately forgettable featuring fellow Atlantans -- rolls through a concise and mostly sweet (if occasionally unremarkable) set of songs that don't depart far from . remains a valuable collaborator: the -sampling is practically a replay of the similarly nostalgia-tinted albeit a welcomed one; is the album's providing yet another sweet twist on a soft- classic; is a kiss-off dipped in honey. (The minor drawback to each of these songs is that has yet to find a discreet way to put a vocal stamp on her productions.) The -produced is the clearest instance where didn't have to dig deep or put herself in someone else's shoes to sell her material: "Ain't you tired of being on the sideline?/Tired of getting yours after I get mine?" If she's the least bit jealous, the other woman would have no way of knowing. ~ Andy Kellman