Two quite different records from Miller, several years apart. Cruel Moon came out in 1999, two years after the fantastic Poison Love, with which it has a lot in common including generally being at its best in the moments where Julie Miller's harmony vocals are most integral (songs like "I'm Gonna Be Strong", "Sometimes I Cry" and the title track) and also being rather simple and rather soulful and very, very good. Whereas The Majestic Silver Strings was from 2011, and saw Miller enlisting a whole battalion of additional guitarists and vocalists (Lee Ann Womack, Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, others) and covering a fair bit of territory including a couple of downright abstract drifters, not all of which speak to me as much as his more straight-ahead offerings - though the album as a whole has plenty to offer.
