Antidote

What you're reading about here is the debut solo release by Jenny Toomey, erstwhile singer/songwriter/guitarist of Tsunami, Liquorice, and Grenadine. Let me ask a favor: Forget what you think you know about Jenny Toomey. What Jenny's done here is braver: She's rebuilt her music from the ground up. Her songs nod toward soul, country, and Tin Pan Alley without devolving into pastiche, her lyrics are both more straightforward and emotionally richer, and her singing, always a strong suit, conveys even more by understatement than they could when belted over Tsunami's distortion.

Some specifics: "Antidote" is divided into two discs, the fruits of separate sessions in Chicago and Nashville. They're as closely linked as the songs' embattled lovers, but they have their own identities as well. On Disc One ("Chicago"), recorded by David Trumfio (Pulsars, X), Jenny is backed both by long-time collaborators and talented new friends. The result: Eight songs that run the bases of romantic dysfunction in terms far more vivid than "romantic dysfunction," from the relatively untroubled 60 tracks of "Breezewood, PA" and the funny-mean-painful advice song "Patsy Cline" to the unsettling "Fall On Me," which wraps everything good and bad about love up in four minutes and at least a dozen trembling violins.

Disc Two ("Nashville") digs even deeper. Gorgeously mixed by Music City vet Mark Nevers (who's recorded everyone from Leann Rimes to Vic Chestnutt), the lush backing sets off Jenny's riskiest writing and most sensitive vocal performances to date, from the Bacharach-with-fangs "The Smell Of Him" to the nearly-whispered "Artful Dodger." "Vulnerable" and "self-revealing" may not always be the keywords of her past work, but that is part of what makes these recordings so special. The accusations fly, but so do the regrets and apologies, until you can barely tell the antidote from the poison.