Hi-Res Downloads

96kHz/24-bit, FLAC; Sire Records 081227947170 (supplied by www.highresaudio.com)

Yes, that Cyndi Lauper – just in case you’d dismissed her as a novelty act after ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, here she is, now in her 60s, goin’ country. Yee-haw, and all that, with not a sign of newer Americana genres here, but instead a series of cover versions of tracks going back to the 1950s, supported by a roster of guest artists. This could so easily have turned into a mawkish set of near-parodies, and as camp as Christmas, but Lauper’s heart is clearly in the right place, and the recording has all the signs of being a labour of love throughout, both musically and in the quality of the recording. It’s just on the right side of being a novelty record, and duets with Willie Nelson (‘Night Life’) and Vince Gill (‘You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly’) work well enough; but the Alison Krauss harmonies blow Lauper out of the saddle on Dolly’s ‘Hard Candy Christmas’. AE

Sound Quality: 80%

Hi-Fi News Lab Report

Opinion is divided on Ms Lauper’s C&W Detour but the recording itself is clean, free of clipping, and offered here in its native 96kHz guise. Harmonics from the fiddles on ‘I Want To Be...’ extend out to 30kHz [see Graph, above]. PM