Perhaps someone somewhere hasn't noticed yet that Dolly Parton is no dumb blonde. She wants to make that clear one more time in the title song of "Backwoods Barbie," insisting, "Don't be fooled by thinkin' that the goods are not all there." That's pretty obvious, since Parton wrote most of the songs, produced them with her guitarist and arranger, Kent Wells, and has released the album on her own label.

Kii Arens (ENLARGE)
Dolly Parton is back to her country roots with 'Backwoods Barbie.'
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She's still ambitious. After a string of bluegrass-rooted albums and concept albums, "Backwoods Barbie" aims to return Parton to mainstream country radio. It has a modern Nashville production full of glossy guitars and full-scale buildups, with a couple of pop remakes (Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears" and Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy" with a pronoun change) as insurance.

Parton devotes a few other songs on "Backwoods Barbie" to her own success and celebrity: the determinedly inspirational "Jesus & Gravity" and the bouncy, oddly callous "Better Get to Livin." But she's far more appealing when she sings about country's classic subject, infidelity. The fragile flutter in her voice and the reedy strength behind it make her as convincing as ever in the power-country ballads "Made of Stone," in which she's the betrayed wife, and "Cologne," where she's the other woman. Once again she's the voice of rural innocence all dressed up in big-city trappings, and still coming through as herself.