Not that she was ever really gone, but LeAnn Rimes is back on the music scene with her soon to be released Remnants album and played a preview this weekend at the El Rey in Los Angeles. She took the stage with the lights focusing on her and sang solo “Long Live Love” from her new album before her band kicked in. If anything in the twenty years since her voice exploded onto the country scene at age 13, she has just gotten better. It was apparent from the get-go that her pipes separate her from the pack. You didn’t even want to sing along. Even the band constantly took a back seat to let her vocals dominate the airwaves. She played a great mixture of her hits: “Nothin’ Better To Do”, “One Way Ticket”, “Blue”, “I Need You”. Her version of “I Can’t Live”, had the band taking such a back seat they were practically not there, and she sang with a range even fuller than the recorded version.

What was surprising was the quality and over all feel of the new songs. The new album has Rimes maturing from country starlet to soulful rocker. She joked about how most tracks on the forthcoming album are love songs, but as her new song says, “Love is Love is Love”, and I’ve never heard of someone having too much.

She had the most fun on stage when during “Can’t Fight The Moonlight” from the Coyote Ugly soundtrack she brought the funk and made a medley of it, really getting the crowd going with some “Superstition” before bringing it back to her hit. It was obvious she was having fun on stage and was very glad to be sharing her new songs with everyone for the first time. I can’t understate how good they were, they stood out in a show full of top country hits.

For her encore she came out and said she was going to change things up because she just feels like singing this song and went into her rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It was just her and a very turned down guitar accompanying her. The only thing that left me unsatisfied was she didn’t sing “Commitment.” That was the first track of hers I noticed twenty years ago, and everything that goes with it. I can’t help but think she scratched it at the end for “Hallelujah” which I get with recently losing Cohen, and her celebrating the positive reception of her new material I’d feel like singing something that really showcased my talent and shared my emotions too. I can only hope this album is well received and she goes on a major tour so that everyone gets to hear her.