UP COUNTRY

By RICHARD CORLISS

At last month's Country Music Awards, Matraca Berg picked up a Song of the Year trophy for Strawberry Wine, co-written with Gary Harrison. That was a ho-hum: the Nashville scribe has penned prime bedroom and barroom laments for Reba McEntire (Last One to Know), Trisha Yearwood (XXX's and OOO's), Martina McBride (Wild Angels), Patty Loveless (You Can Feel Bad) and other country thrushes. But that same night, Berg sang Back When We Were Beautiful, about a widow recalling her one and only love, and put so much ache and age into it you could hear a collective heart breaking. Now, with the release of the CD Sunday Morning to Saturday Night, Reba and the rest better watch out. Matraca (rhymes with mesa) is moving up, from composer to competitor.

Everybody knows that country is the last lair of sophisticated songwriting: character sketches, Ozark melodramas and, for the female singers, three-minute nervous breakdowns. Berg, 34, works expertly in all these genres and, like a backwoods Bruegel, portrays solitary figures going down in flames in teeming small-town landscapes. She peoples her sorority with the hopeful (Along for the Ride), the horny (Back in the Saddle--just try not to sing along) and a fine assortment of wistful waitresses. They commandeer the later songs on the album (Good Ol' Girl, If I Were an Angel, The Resurrection), toying with desperation, coming home to make peace with family and failure. They have seen so much, and still they dream, "like the wildflowers grow between the rails." And with each song, Berg's voice matures, sours, mellows, understands.

Berg's best tone is retrospective: a voice from the grave, or rehab, or the front-porch rocker of memory. That ode to loss, Back When We Were Beautiful, finds its power in the pain it evokes. Tough sentiment, gorgeous song, terrific scrapbook of an album.

--By Richard Corliss