« Elvis Costello & the Imposters | Main | Fayssoux »

KRISTIN MOONEY
Hydroplane
(self)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Images of travel course through Hydroplane, but Kristin Mooney doesn't traffic in greasy trucker tales. Moody instead uses her traveling imagery -- where you find "highways like veins" or encounter a "dream color bus" -- to convey her characters' physical and emotional rootlessness. While "Mexican Highway" offers a postcard view of "artichoke fields/Land that a tourist rarely sees," it also finds the protagonist revealing: "You used to know me/I used to know you too." In the title track, Moody's evocative, elliptical lyrics ("Sometimes you call when you drink/And dishes fill the sink/Curled up in a chair/I ask are you still there") subtly suggest a relationship on the skids. Moody's languid, torch-noir sound recalls Sam Phillips, but with fewer baroque touches and less sense of despair. While Mooney isn't especially prolific -- she's released just three discs in the past decade -- this alluring, exquisite album is well worth the wait.

-- MICHAEL BERICK
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Michael Berick.