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On Michelle Shocked’s Kind Hearted Woman, recorded almost four years ago and sold at her shows but only now being released widely (Private Music), the singer forgoes sentimentality and instead strives to paint stark, realistic pictures of life as she sees it, using her trademark vibrato-intense voice as a conduit of pain. Her modus operandi isn’t new: The Texas Campfire Tapes (1986) and Short Sharp Shocked (1988) also echoed within the familiar confines of sorrow and anger with surprising emotional rawness, even for an artist steeped in the traditions of honky-tonk honesty, folk-rock confessions, and punk outrage. Shocked, in the press notes for Kind Hearted Woman, says that “stories about death, frustration, death, death, death and death lead to grace, redemption, acceptance and, God willing, peace.” I certainly hope so.

During the last few years, she has been bitterly fighting her former label Mercury, a battle she finally won earlier this year (she still owns her masters, including those for Kind Hearted Woman, and her contract with Private Music is nonexclusive). Mercury’s last stand is Mercury Poise: 1988-1995. The collection shows Shocked’s musical range, from the big sky country of “On the Greener Side” and the anguished folk rock of “Anchorage” and “Stillborn” (from Short Sharp Shocked and Kind Hearted Woman, respectively) to the jump blues of “Street Corner Ambassador.” It’s a good primer for those not familiar with Shocked’s song cycle.

“Life is good,” Shocked writes. “New Orleans is home. God is in his heaven and all’s right with the world. Believe me. Then carry on like you always did.” Shocked’s shows are filled with stories, acoustic and full-band treatments, and audience participation, and can easily stretch to three hours. So, get to living after the show.