It might look like a CD, but make no mistake: singer/songwriter Shelby Lynne's new release, Suit Yourself, is an old vinyl LP.

At a scant 44 minutes, it's a throwback to a time when music releases were all lean, no filler, rather than padded out to 80 minutes with no purpose. Lynne produced it with a wide stereo separation and left in the between-song chatter.

"I believe the best records leave you wanting more. Like life, you know. Or a concert. You don't wanna see somebody for 2 1/2 hours either. That was a conscious decision. You can get in there with stuff, let it do its work and get out.

"I still listen to vinyl. You get what you get and you have to get up after six songs and turn it over."

Lynne kicks off the Suit Yourself tour tonight. The disc has a loose but polished feel, much of the "loose" coming from the partial outtakes/rehearsals that Lynne mixed into the final cut.

"I didn't have any plans to do anything but a record. It was just feeling so good as it went down that I thought 'Why not share this with everybody?' It's worthy of letting everyone else have fun, too," Lynne says in a call from her adopted desert home in Palm Springs, Calif.

The mix-ups and casual feel of the record definitely give it more charm. "I think I work harder on making it not perfect," she says.

Lynne knows about hard work. It took a half-dozen records before she won a Grammy for best new artist after 2000's breakthrough I Am Shelby Lynne. Some fans felt she lost her way a bit with the two follow-ups (Love, Shelby and Identity Crisis), but Suit Yourself is a strong return to assured songwriting and wistful music that fans will embrace.

Recorded in a home studio in Palm Springs to 2-inch analog tape, it does sound like an old record, right down to the fact that Lynne sequenced it in two six-song blocks - as if you have to flip it over to hear the other side.

"For my own personal records I like it to sound very modern but reminiscent of something that used to feel very good to me. Old records do that to me. There's a beauty in the quality of the way a tape-recording sounds as opposed to digital. I prefer that," she says.

And she prefers working quickly: several songs were written, then quickly recorded.

"The vocals that you hear on Johnny Met June, You and We, Where I Am Now were all cut within 12 hours of writing the song," she says. "I don't think you get much more real than that.

"It wasn't a plan - 'Oh, this is going to be the record.' When I made an attempt to recut them, it wasn't there. So I retained what I had . . . I just try to keep it really real and not let technology take over and make this trendy little mess."

Country music legend Tony Joe White, a former Nashville neighbor, appears on the album and Lynne covers two of his songs: For Old Times' Sake and Rainy Night in Georgia.

"I couldn't get out of there without asking him to take a swipe at (Rainy Night). It's one of the greatest songs ever. I just picked up a guitar and started a groove. He said 'Yeah, that's good.' We just started playing.

"That's why there's a fade in on the cut. We were just playing off and on for about 10 minutes. The record version is over 7 minutes long, but the original version is lonnnnng."

The process is interesting, but wouldn't matter if the songs weren't there. But Suit Yourself is filled with some of her best, most emotional songwriting, be it the tribute to Johnny Cash (Johnny Met June) or the defiant I Won't Die Alone. Ice Tea is a breezy moment, where she compares a lover to ice tea and cornbread. In the south, where she was born, that's a compliment.

"Everyone knows if you're a southerner, cornbread and ice tea is the heart and soul of what we are."

Despite a strong band and work by keyboard player Benmont Tench of Tom Petty's band, the songs are almost underplayed, with Lynne's vocal carrying the load. She wasn't necessarily trying to emphasize it, "but it's the tool that carries a song to the heart. I'm not trying to showcase what I'm doing vocally. I'm trying to showcase the song."

The plan is a series of concerts, then back home to Palm Springs, where she went after fleeing Nashville seven years ago.

"It's so beautiful today, man. It's 90 degrees, but it's so perfect. I don't mind the heat. If it's 114, I go straight to the pool or stay in and write. I really enjoy the quiet."

brownm@RockyMountainNews.co or 303-892-2674

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