Blessed with one of Americana's most arresting voices, this Nashville-based singer follows her superb 2006 debut with a further foray into the more crepuscular corners of the city's alternative music scene. At its best, as on Solid State, Son & Moon and Being Crosby, a duet with My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Boys offers overwhelming proof of Tidwell's capacity at once to lull and to unsettle the listener with a voice that soars, swoops and disarms utterly. Yet a miasmic fog envelops some of the tracks, meaning songs such as Palace, Oslo and Oh, China, satisfyingly sepulchral and spooky though they undoubtedly are, work more convincingly as leaves from the Cocteau Twins manual of multilayered sound constructions than as showcases for singing that, when more exposed and less overpowered, remains devastating.
City Slang SLANG702480