A few-frills country singer with a crystalline, oak-sturdy voice, Martina McBride has evolved herself into an unsullied, above-the-fray position similar to that which Kitty Wells has always held among her contemporaries.

This, her fourth album, is a pleasure from start to finish, in spite of its shaky first track, a version of Little Jimmy Dickens's old standby “I'm Little But I'm Loud,” which is as childish as one would expect from a recording originally made when McBride was 7 (singing at an 4-H convention, saved by her mom and unearthed, rashly, for this collection). The rest of the tracks are uniformly entertaining, with tasteful, appealingly varied songwriting contributions by such splendid artists as Beth Neilsen Chapman, Tony Martin and Brent Bourgeois, as well as pop writers Cynthia Well and Jim Brickman. McBride, in fact, sings the sweetly romantic Brickman-Jack Kugell song “Valentine” in front of a quartet that includes Brickam on piano. And Clint Black joins McBride for an invigorating duet on “Still Holdin' On,” a tribute to fidelity he wrote with Matraca Berg and Marty Stuart.

McBride does seem to be right on track. Let's just hope she isn't squirreling away anything alse from her childhood.

(RCA) Ralph Novak