Walking Wires (1-2-3-4-GO!, 2013)

At first glimpse, 22- year old Logan Brill may look like she's cut from the standard female country star mold. With her flowing blond locks, soft beauty and silky voice, she could have put out a debut collection full of boiler plate themes with glossy instrumentation and fared just fine in Music City.

Refreshingly, she and producer Frank Liddell (Lee Ann Womack, Miranda Lambert) laced the album with elements of Americana, roots and rock. The fact that her main influences - Keb Mo, Buddy Guy and Sam Cooke - are beyond her years helps to explain the more seasoned feel of this record. Her experience playing in her brother's blues band as a teenager further lends authenticity to the genre mix. She is convincing in her delivery, from the heartbreaking highlight Scars to the Pistol Annies' sass on Month Of Bad Habits.

She confessed, "I'm generally an extremely happy person. I only have very few days a year that I'm down, but I'm really into depressing music. I'm really into music that's intimate in that sense, even if it's something that I've never experienced before. I'm drawn to the level of depth that you don't get in upbeat songs."

She clearly had a few of those days composing this album. The tracks are thematically heavy and some downright gloomy. The Chris Stapleton penned opener, No Such Thing As Ghosts recounts enduring hurt after love is gone. On Rewind, she sings, "I'm drinking stronger spirits and I made my home here on the floor."

Like the artist herself, the album is a study in contradiction. She delivers the dark material with the silky finesse of Sarah McLachlan and more than keeps up with the bruising guitars on Ne'er Do Wells with the brute force of Pink.

She has a degree in French with a minor in vocal performance from Belmont University. It certainly feels like the latter was her major.