Bettye LaVette, finally calling the shots Elizabeth Flandung Bettye LaVette The Scene of the Crime Anti- more music most popular most commented The Brakes by Edd Hurt We Are Scientists' Brain Thrust Mastery by DAN WEISS Subtle's ExitingARM by IAN COHEN Black Stars: Ghana's Hiplife Generation by Phil Freeman Death Cab for Cutie's Narrow Stairs by GARRETT KAMPS Girls Love Gay Male Porn Pucker Up by Tristan Taormino My Boyfriend's Kink Is Getting Fat. What Do I Do? Savage Love by Dan Savage Sex and the City Spoilers: A Sneak Preview of What Really Happens to Carrie and the Girls by Lynn Yaeger Our Favorite Writers Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books Summer Guide by ALEXANDER NAZARYAN The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo by Maria Luisa Tucker NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit (9) Sean Gardiner Devo-Inspired Art in East Williamsburg (8) Maro The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo (5) Maria Luisa Tucker David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' (4) David Mamet Runnin' Scared: Deep South of Houston: Is a Soul-Food Restaurant Too Black for Soho? (4) Runnin' Scared: Chloe A. Hilliard

A haughty interpreter with actorly instincts, LaVette does right by Willie Nelson's "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces," and turns Eddie Hinton's "I Still Want to Be Your Baby (Take Me Like I Am)" into a master class on phrasing. She doesn't hide her drinking, her lust, or her jealousy, and just for kicks affects vulnerability on Elton John and Bernie Taupin's "Talking Old Soldiers." Bellying up to the bar, she sings, "I know how it feels to grow old." And on her own "Before the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette)," she substitutes autobiographical bravado for songwriterly anxiety and makes it sound natural.