Iris DeMent is back more than a decade after her last record. She just released Sing The Delta and is taking on a big US Tour. Time for us to dig out her first release, one that gave us goose bumps and soothed us in the evening.

Infamous Angel is Iris DeMent’s debut album, released in 1992 when she was 25. She’s the Emmylou Harris many people have missed. She’s the spiritual daughter of Patsy Cline many people never heard of. Yet for those who are familiar with her work she definitely counts as one of America’s best singers and songwriters of the past 20 years. Her timbre is pure and strong and her influences draw from Gospel, Blues and everything southern. The result she shares with us is intelligent, honest and pure country music.

With Infamous Angel she started to lay the foundations of a powerful legacy – on which she is still working -, continued with the highly confessional album simply titled My Life, released two years later, followed by The Way I Should, Lifeline and 2013′s Sing The Delta. As a songwriter, DeMent explores religion, the sense of belonging, the pain and acceptation of loss and the complexity and sweetness in human’s relationships.

“Everybody’s wondering what and where they all came from. Everybody’s worried about where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done. But no one knows for certain so it’s all the same to me. I think I’ll just let the mystery be.”

It’s hard to say what’s DeMent’s greatest strenght. Does it lie in her rich, blasting, born-to-sing-country voice or in the perfection of her songwriting, where every line is crafted with care and no word is superfluous? Maybe it’s just the sincerity and honesty with which she delivers her songs. It’s pure.