Texas Platters

Rosie Flores & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts

Rosie Flores is a classic country woman: Texas-born and doe-eyed, big-voiced and familiar with the barroom stage. Her 1987 self-titled debut on Warner Bros. should have elbowed out a spot in Nashville's scene, but country music careers come and go with the tides, and Flores rolled with it. So there's everything to be said about her latest, 20 years later, being perhaps the best of her 40-year career. The heartbreak and hard living and fast times in between, the ones obligatory for good country songs, crystallize on Girl of the Century, her 12th studio album and Bloodshot debut. She's backed by Jon Langford-led trio the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, an inspired pairing that makes the gun-toting blues of opener "Chauffeur," Broken Spoke honky-tonk of "This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'," and rockabilly of "I Ain't Got You" more than just genres Flores knows well. Her voice is still a thing of wonder; on slow-jam "Dark Enough at Midnight," she turns up the heat under her Patsy Cline come-hither, and "Little Bells," one of two duets with Langford, fares better than the novelty he said/she said schtick of "Who's Gonna Take Your Garbage Out?" Closer "Girl of the Century" is all Rosie, the heaving, lump-in-your-throat finale any classic country woman needs in her back pocket when the spotlight's bathing her. (Rosie plays Wanda Jackson's birthday show at the Continental Club, Friday, Oct. 23.)