Sheryl Crow

★★★ Threads BIG MACHINE. CD/DL/LP Her eleventh album, but her first of downhome duets. Inevitably, Sheryl Crow’s 2017’s underperforming

Be Myself was followed by a split with her major label and career reassessment. That an exuberant but unambitious duets album is her next step suggests that, 26 years after

Tuesday Night Music Club, she remains unsure where to pitch herself. Threads is the unashamedly rootsy affair Crow has been on the cusp of since

Detours. Her stellar guests are a combination of the usual suspects (Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt), some curveballs (a rampaging Chuck D, a curiously emasculated St. Vincent), plus Keith Richards, who adds vocals, four types of guitar and piano to The Rolling Stones’ The Worst, and Neil Young, credited only in the small print for guitar work on Cross Creek Road. Crow sounds wholly at ease, but for all the vocal variety Stevie Nicks, James Taylor and a rueful Vince Gill bring, she doesn’t sound wholly inspired. John Aizlewood