It’s been 20 years since I Am Shelby Lynne, the album which earned her a Best New Artist Grammy nod. This time, Shelby Lynne, her debut Thirty Tigers release, removes the I Am and gets direct to the heart of the singer-songwriter-instrumentalist who gives it her name. This is an album of mostly solo, spare but emotionally rich, original torch songs done the only way this idiosyncratic artist knows how at once tortured and vulnerable, with intimate feelings laid bare, but ultimately offering hope that there’s a light in the darkness. Recalling her 2008 Dusty Springfield tribute, Just a Little Lovin, recorded with the late Grammy-winning producer Phil Ramone at the same Capitol Studios where the new album was mixed, the soulful Shelby Lynne is her most personal, autobiographical statement yet on the dual, push-pull nature of love: at once close enough to touch, but also a frustrating tease that can both seduce and abandon. The album itself proceeded from a collaboration between Lynne and lyricist/director /screenwriter Cynthia Mort that morphed into an unreleased, full-length feature film, When We Kill the Creators, featuring several live recordings made right on the set of the production, which explains their raw immediacy. Starring Lynne representing not just her alter ego, but all endangered musicians and artists, the movie makes a strong case for the ever-going conflict between art and commerce, and how dangerous it can be to muzzle creativity for the corporate buck. Songs like the opening, ominous Strange Things (with lyrics by Mort), the aching Revolving Broken Heart and the climactic self-declaration Here I Am (another collaboration with Mort) all recorded live during filming take on a narrative arc that exists on its own. really a new Shelby Lynne album, she explains about this set of songs, her first solo release since 2015. Her collaboration with Cynthia Mort is the first time she’s done something like this since working with Ron Sexsmith on several songs for her previous disc, I Can’t Imagine. When we met, I wanted to go someplace else with my writing, get out of my own head. She came along and I just loved her words, her landscape, her mind, the visions I got. I found songs and stories in her lyrics. They drove me to different musical places. It’s been a fun journey. The Detroit-born Mort, a lifelong music fan best known for creating and producing the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me, wrote the original screenplay for the film and the lyrics for Here I Am before she ever met Shelby.