Much like her 2002 debut album Reckless Burning, Jesse Sykes’ 2004 studio outing Oh, My Girl plays with a smoldering twang at half-lidded, head-nodding tempos. The title-track opens with impassioned and poetic imagery musing on a protagonist mustering up the courage to destroy a lover’s heart after stealing one more moment together. The rainy day Americana of “You Are Not Gotten Here” plays with even more sparse instrumentation and restraint. Phil Wandscher’s picking and bending dances slowly around Sykes’ acoustic arpeggios, approximating the same pained loneliness heard in her nearly whispered inflections. In the slightly up-tempo and fleshed-out “The Dreaming Dead” her voice takes on more androgynous tones as the band plays Spanish-tinged country-folk, while Sykes’ vulnerability is put under the magnifying glass in “Your Eyes Told,” a near-perfect piece of opiated twang that resonates with more authenticity than the sum of all Cowboy Junkies’ recordings. “Grow a New Heart” bookends with beautiful interplay between vibraphone and fluid pedal-steel notes.