(Zoe/Rounder) www.rounder.com

We know that Martha Wainwright is newly married, too, but the presumptive bliss of that state does not seep into her new record, with the exception of a single song (“Niger River”) that, we’re told, she wrote for her husband — and even there, she can’t get away from herself (“I am caged in the chains of my own sad nature”). For the rest, Wainwright, sounding at times like a deranged Kate Bush, employs a much wider palette of pop and folk sounds than on her debut to travel through love unrequited (“Bleeding Over You”), lost (“I spent my time trying to forget you with booze and smoke from cigarettes and dope,” from “Comin’ Tonight”), and betrayed (“You Cheated Me,” perhaps the most classic-sounding pop song Wainwright has yet written), along with stops for loneliness (“Hearts Club Band,” “Jimi”) and the brooding presence of death (“In the Middle of the Night,” “The George Song”). The words are Wainwright’s, but it’s her voice and the way she uses it to deliver them — bending and twisting her words, elongating syllables, drawling, caterwauling, whispering, soaring — that imbues this gorgeous yet unsettling record with the sense that a breakdown of some sort is imminent.

Standout tracks: “You Cheated Me,” “In the Middle of the Night” STUART MUNRO