Inspiration takes wing on Little Sparrow. With its soaring harmonies and sprightly acoustic arrangements, Dolly Parton's second bluegrass-oriented album (following The Grass is Blue) recalls the unaffected purity of her Coat of Many Colors and Jolene days in the 1970s. Rarely does a veteran artist sound so renewed, as Parton applies her bittersweet trill to a selection that extends from a majestic reading of Collective Soul's "Shine" through a banjo-driven breakdown on Steve Young's "Seven Bridges Road" and a breezy romp through Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You". Original material such as "My Blue Tears" and "Mountain Angel" brings out the best in Parton, (though the overly precious title cut and the girlish "Marry Me" don't fare as well). With the support of vocal acolytes including Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent, Claire Lynch and Maura O'Connell, Parton sounds like she's leading a chorus of angels. -Don McLeese.

Consider this, Emmylou Harris's emancipation proclamation-an album that confirms that 1995's adventurously atmospheric Wrecking Ball wasn't an aberration, but a preview of more radical changes to come. Long the godmother of alternative-country's traditionalist wing, Harris here writes songs with Luscious Jackson's Jill Cunniff, sings a duet with Dave Matthews ("My Antonia") and recruits Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa to provide harmonies on the album's most compelling ballad ("Tragedy"). The production by Malcolm Burn applies sonic treatments of drum machines, shimmering guitars and echoed vocals to a song cycle by Harris that is largely original and deeply personal, filled with dream imagery and evocations of a spiritual quest. While material such as "Michaelangelo" and "Bang the Drum Slowly" suffers from an arty ponderousness, it's doubtful that Harris has ever recorded an album that means more to her than Red Dirt Girl. -Don McLeese.

Forget that bit about imitation being the most sincere form of flattery: in music at least, an artist truly pays tribute to another by fully appropriating his work and making it his own. Such is the case on New Coat of Paint: Songs of Tom Waits, easily one of the best releases in the frequently tiresome genre of tribute albums. Indeed, the late Screamin' Jay Hawkins' delirious take on Waits's voodoo classic "Whistlin' past the Graveyard" is so dead-on that it's almost inconceivable he didn't write it. The same could be said for soul-man Andre Williams' sleazy version of "Pasties and a G-string", Flat Duo Jets' Dexter Romweber's manic "Romeo Is Bleeding" and Knoxville Girls' supremely tacky "Virginia Avenue". Lydia Lunch has been rewriting and singing "Heartattack And Vine" for at least 20 years, whether she wrote the original or not. Perhaps the single most impressive act of re-appropriation comes from one-man band Christopher Watkins, aka Preacher Boy, with a mournful, near-orchestral version of "Old Boyfriends". And a trio of torchy ballads from Congo Norvell's Sally Norvell, Geraldine Fibbers' Carla Bozulich and Eleni Mandell further illustrate the breadth of Waits' huge body of work. New Coat of Paint is given an inner cohesion by the incestuous connections of several of the acts, all veterans (appropriately) of LA's outlaw underground music scene. Perhaps the greatest compliment is that most of these tracks don't compare to the originals at all, but simply stand alone as classic compositions from the songbook of an iconoclastic American master of gutter-poetry. -Carl Hanni.