Patty Loveless has spent her career choosing between country pop and hardcore country, and she’s produced masterpieces in both styles (Long Stretch of Lonesome and Mountain Soul, respectively). But now it seems she’s sick of having to choose at all. On Your Way Home is built equally around the boot-scooting rhythms of contemporary country and the phrasing, melodies, and instrumentation of honky-tonk and bluegrass. For instance, "I Don’t Want to Be that Strong" begins, hushed, in a manner as perfect for a front-porch performance by fiddle and guitar, then skyrockets into right-now power ballad territory even as an old-school pedal-steel guitar keeps wanging away. She cries here at a grandfather’s funeral; gets so horny, on the Rodney Crowell-penned first single, that she calls in sick; goes carousing on Buddy and Julie Miller’s "Lookin’ for a Heartache Like You"; and on the title track, confronts a husband about where he stops on his way home from work. Loveless’ every strangled, knotty note is classic in content and contemporary in execution. And vice versa, too. --David Cantwell