by Mike Joyce

MARY LEE'S CORVETTE "700 Miles"Bar/None

Immersing herself in Bob Dylan's words and music certainly hasn't dulled Mary Lee Kortes's gift for songwriting. If anything, the experience has only sharpened her pen and wit. Which is why last year's "Blood on the Tracks," Mary Lee's Corvette's bold interpretation of the 1975 Dylan album of the same name, now has a worthy successor in "700 Miles."

Not that "700 Miles" is conspicuously Dylanesque. Kortes subtly invoke shades of Dylan and other tunesmiths here, including John Hiatt on "More Stupider," which begins: "I got your letter, got it today / Your spelling's getting better / Your punctuation's okay." As contemporary blues fueled by bewilderment, despair and a lot of wry humor, the song underscores, intentionally or not, why Kortes looks so longingly at the notion of an unencumbered life elsewhere on the album. "All I want is to want nothing" she chants on "The Nothing Song." "Raindrops fallin' everywhere but on me / Oh my God how good it feels to be free," she exclaims on "Out From Under It." The song most likely to outlive the album, though, is "All the Rage," a lament for a world benighted by distortions, anger and hate.

Kortes wrote or co-wrote all the songs on "700 Miles," save for Townes Van Zandt's "No Place to Fall," which serves as a poignant, gospel-inflected coda. The uncluttered yet often imaginatively textured arrangements are a big plus, too, placing the focus where it ought to be -- on Kortes's enchanting voice and tale-spinning.