Claire Lynch has found her calling.  It's only in bluegrass music where the minimalistic backing of banjo, fiddles, mandolin and light percussion can organically bring out the beauty of her natural vocal timbre.  With the tenderness of a young Alison Krauss and the emotional richness of Dolly Parton, Lynch's voice can be a balm for the hurting soul.  Listening to Lynch's voice itself is worth the price of this album.  This is why insiders of the music industry will tell you that when Selah's Allan Hall, Patty Loveless, Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton are looking for a harmony vocalist on their records, they would think of Lynch.  Lynch herself had been fronting her own bluegrass band Front Porch String Band for years, before venturing out on her own.  One of Lynch's albums "Friends for a Lifetime" is still ranked today as one of the movers and shakers record of the bluegrass Gospel genre.  Her rendition of Paul Craft's "Your Presence is My Favorite Gift" is one of the best tributes to the abiding power of the Holy Spirit.  And no one even comes close to Lynch when she delivers a heart-swelling cover of the hymn "There is a Fountain."  Now, this bluegrass virtuoso returns with "Dear Sister."  "Dear Sister" is her first album since 2009's "Whatcha Gonna Do" and it's also her debut for Compass Records.

"Dear Sister" functions like a prism for life.  On these 10 newly recorded paeans, we get to journey with Lynch over some intricate relationships; some of which will make us glee in appreciation while others will tingle our tear ducts as we silently ache for the protagonist's loss and heartbreak.  Akin to the latter is the title cut "Dear Sister."  Inspired by Frank Anderson Chappel's "Dear Sister: Civil War Letters to a Sister in Alabama," "Dear Sister" recounts the ordeals of a comrade in the battlefields far away from home.  The opening lines: "This could be my last letter/I may never see the cotton fields of home again/I miss you, dear sister - tonight I never felt so all alone" are enough to put brakes to the heart.  The beauty of some songs resides not in its ingenious production but in its ability to articulate the longings of the human heart.  The Irene Kelley and Lynch composition "Need Someone" gives transparent expression to our longing to be loved; the song's emotional depths really strike a universal chord within the human psyche.    

Sarah Siskind who wrote Alison Krauss' "Simple Love" gets to showcase two of her originals: the first is her co-write with Al Anderson "Doin' Time."  A jaunty bluegrass romper, "Doin' Time" describes the restlessness God has placed in our souls.  And the ace of the song lies in its descriptive detail of how such a restlessness uncurbed by the Cross often brews into rebellion and sin:  "I lit a match when I was seven, burned down our home/Took the blame for all the trouble I put them through/But the trouble won't release me no matter what I do."  Siskind's other input is tad brighter. In a time where melody has often been steamrolled, "Everybody Knows I've Been Crying" will get us tapping our toes and singing along in no time.  "How Many Moons" has everything we have come to love about Lynch: a heart-shredding ballad about unrequited love accompanied by a sympathetic steel guitar and a wailing fiddle.  

Lynch returns to her Christian roots most explicitly through "That Kind of Love" and "Patch of Blue." "That Kind of Love" is a sparkling country-flavored ode to sacrificial love, while "Patch of Blue" is essentially a prayer for God to intervene in times when we are disheartened.  Quipped with poetic beauty, listen as Lynch aches:  "I've been prayin' for a patch of blue/To come shinin' through the rain/Lookin' up now, there is only you/Smilin' down into my world of grey."  The pride of place of Lynch's "Dear Sister" is that this is not an opaque record where the artist hides behind trendy beeps and a wall of crashing guitars.  Rather, this is a collection where we can experience for ourselves the highs and lows of life; the broken as well as the whole; the dysfunctional as well as the healed.   Be warned:  this is not a record you can hear without your heart involved.