On her third release, the embittered songbird is still making the kind of stark, waltzy piano-driven music you'd imagine Sylvia Plath -- or catatonics who spent their impressionable years locked in closets -- would enjoy. Not that it's needlessly bleak or ever uninteresting; but it is unrelentingly sad and angry from beginning to end, something even chamomile tea and a hot bath won't cure. Wright works from the darkest of palettes with broad, splattering strokes, painting scary pictures straight from the sunless depths of her gut. She sings of vast decay, blackened eyes, trembling hands, wobbled legs, weeping faces and bodies in boxes. That is, when she's not addressing doleful pleas, thoughtless acts, boorish rackets, fruitless titles and boiling light. If only Mary Sunshine could turn as many cartwheels!
Yet despite her knack for swallowing the occasional syllable or wailing furiously from a tightly clenched throat, Wright pulls off a thing of unmistakable beauty here. Chamber-enhanced tracks like "Vessel for a Minor Malady" unfurl a white flag with the lyrics "there's no cure so why should I care," but with so much tenderness in her voice that it's hard not to imagine she might feel otherwise. (The fact that Wright dedicates the record to a woman who lost her battle with lupus offers a little insight.) Cello-accompanied numbers ("Surly Demise," "Bells") would pass for uplifting if you ignored lyrics like "throw the matches upon my bed" and concentrated on their gorgeous arrangements. Taken in its entirety, though, one thing remains painfully obvious after listening to this disc: Someone needs a hug.
