Sara Watkins shines on her own

Sara Watkins
Sara Watkins
Released April 7 on Nonesuch

When Nickel Creek pulled the plug in 2007, they billed it as "taking a break." But its three members, individually, have been using their time off to, well, work.

Chris Thile has been plugging away on solo work and collaborations, including an album and tour with band The Punch Brothers. Sean Watkins likewise has solo efforts under his belt, and he recently released a collaboration with Jon Foreman called Fiction Family. But aside from her work with her brother on the Watkins Family Hour shows, we hadn't heard much from Nickel Creek fiddle player Sara Watkins.

But with her self-titled first foray into solo recording, Watkins knocks it out of the park. Produced by Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, the album spans the considerable range of Watkins' talents -- from heartrending ballads to vintage-y foot-stompers, from whispery to sassy on the vocals, from simple to slick in sound.

Watkins doesn't have a voice made for belting out lyrics, and, God bless her, she knows it. The album's songs -- eight of which she wrote -- suit her delicate voice, bringing out its beauty instead of forcing it into showy acrobatics. Her quavery voice perfectly captures the lingering devastation of lost love on "All This Time," but she turns it up for the glistening "Too Much," a David Garza-penned piece of pop perfection that went straight to my "favorite songs of 2009" list after just one listen.

As if Jones wasn't enough star power in the liner notes, other names lending their talents to this album are Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Jon Brion, Tim O'Brien and Ronnie McCoury. She can pick the songs, all right, and evidently she knows how to pick her friends, too.

Despite the presence of Thile and Sean Watkins on several tracks, it's not a Nickel Creek disc. It's a showcase for Sara Watkins, whose voice, fiddle chops and ear for the perfect song make her shine just as brightly as her bandmates -- if not brighter.