Shimmering and shining like waves on a summer beach, Linda Ronstadt's voice crashes into you with heartrending power. The passion pouring from her new album, Don't Cry Now -whether she is tearing through the higher registers or purring tenderly in the softer moments- appears real enough, as if Linda were dipping into some personal tragedy for inspiration. The album contains ten tunes of lost love, all sung beautifully despite the mediocre production that surrounds them and which threatens to throw Linda's delicately balanced pathos into the abyss of soap opera melodrama.

It is a very quiet, sad, lonely album. Perfect for a latenight confrontation with your fears, when you don't want anything to make you feel worse but you have to have somebody with you who understands. And throughout Don't Cry Now Linda certainly understands. Song after song, whether the opening "I Can Almost See It," Eagles' "Desperado," the title tune "Don't Cry Now," "Everybody Loves a Winner" or Neil Young's "I Believe in You," she tries to mend somebody's broken heart. She does very well, too. But her lack of anything else to say and the never-ending country ballad form (eight of the ten tunes are ballads) weigh the music down to a one-dimensional crawl.