VONDA SHEPARD's It's Good Eve (Vesper Alley) Shepard isn't just Jackson Browne's backup singer and current opening act. She's a potential inheritor of his old-school mantle- which to say, piano based, baby faced, supple-voiced singer/songwriters rarely get any better than this. Shepard's studio rap sheet may prepare you for the sweet white soul melisma of her delivery, but the surprise is in the gorgeous harmonic sophistication of her original ballads, from breakup laments as pointe as "Long Term Boyfriend" to smartly written odes d'amour such as "Like a Hemisphere." A- |