Short Sharp Shocked is the leader of the pack. In the summer of 1988, the windows of the Lower East Side were blasting the blues shuffle of If Love was a Train in anticipation of that fall’s hit single, Anchorage and a tropical winter-blues chaser When I Grow Up soon followed. Short Sharp Shocked was the delivery on the promise of an auspicious Cinderella story, when Michelle was “discovered” in the UK by a bootleg recording released by the indie label Cooking Vinyl. To no one’s surprise, the studio effort was even more confident than the candid snapshot of the ingenue captured at a Texas campfire. The balladry and regional narratives of Short Sharp Shocked belie the punk-aggro cover of the album, a newsphoto of the young squatter arrested in a San Francisco protest. The Grammy nomination for a freshman effort was industry acknowledgment of a solid sender.