Danielle Howle: Catalog

In recent years, plenty of female performers—from those mainstream mainstays that populate the Lilith Fair to such diverse underground phenoms as Ani DiFranco, Sleater-Kinney, and Liz Phair—have proven that estrogen is every bit the equal of testosterone in the world of pop music. As if that even needed to be illustrated at this point: From country stars (Patsy Cline) through folk pioneers (Joni Mitchell) to countless punk outfits (The Slits), female musicians have always been at least the equal of their male peers. But if there's one element some female folk performers often seem to lack, it's the dark quality that gives artists like Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, and Elliott Smith their haunting allure. Credit Shannon Wright, then, with taking a risk and diving off the edge. Her haunting solo debut, Flightsafety, is full of beautifully enigmatic songs that find her unafraid to cast off the positive, pick-me-up sheen that hampers so many of her peers. Formerly of the band Crowsdell, Wright retreated from New York City when the group broke up. Holing up down south, she started accumulating the songs that ended up on Flightsafety. Wright's adept, versatile musicianship makes the album all the more personal, as she plays nearly every instrument herself, thus ensuring that in the transfer of song from soul to tape, no emotion was lost. "Floor Pile" begins the album on a dour note that indicates the direction in which its remainder will head: near-whispered vocals, effective minor keys, and spooky instrumentation. Wright, who plays guitar, keyboards, and drums, has a keen sense of lyricism, leaving the listener to fill in the gaps left by such oblique lines as, "Shade calls the bone marrow she left a stage so bare." Wright's atmospheric piano and organ enhances such songs as "William's Alabama" and "Heavy Crown," while her spare drumming is just sloppy enough to give the music a hint of desperation. The prolific Danielle Howle has accumulated a shelf-load of her own records, and also amassed an armada of hyperbolic boosters. She's the kind of songwriter who tries to rhyme like Bob Dylan and frequently interrupts her live performances with funny anecdotes a la DiFranco. But the display of the former habit on her new Catalog just doesn't cut it. Howle's lyrics, in particular, are so self-consciously poetic-with-a-capital-P that they're hard to take seriously, and her guitar work is plain and not very compelling: This is coffee-shop filler at its most disposable, and Howle has revealed before that she has it in her to make music more interesting than this. Only a few songs—"Still In Love With You," the Jeff Buckley-esque "Old," and the title track—hint at what she is capable of, but Catalog is so eager to please, or at least eager not to displease, that it never reaches out and grabs the listener. The songs just lack conviction.