(Dead Oceans)

www.deadoceans.com

When Casey Dienel made her debut, with the charming Wind-Up Canary in 2006, there was an engaging girl-next-door quality to her jazz-folk vocal stylings. You could tell, in the piano parts and certain rather striking melodic lines, that Dienel had musical training, but the overall effect was fresh and unstudied. She sounded natural and wholesome. You might have pictured her with freckles.

Since that record, Dienel has assembled a band, substituted White Hinterland for her own given name and pursued a denser, fuller sound. Still, it wasn't hard to draw the line from Wind-Up Canary to White Hinterland's Phylactery Factory in 2008. She sounded like the same voice in a slightly different context. Now, with Kairos, Dienel has made a sharper break from the past, building chilled, echoing, dub-infused caverns of sound and singing within them in a very sophisticated, R&B flavored style. It's like seeing the girl next door for the first time with her hair up and in an off-the-shoulder gown. She's beautiful, but it takes a little getting used to.

It starts right off the bat with the booming bass drum, the ice-clean snare shots of "Icarus," a slowed down dance beat that might remind you a little bit of Portishead. Dienel's voice is clear and pure, embellished with gentle swoops and bends. She shapes a wordless "whoo-oo-oo" into a waterfall of cascading notes that reverberates eerily within the song. The bass is almost subliminal in this track, pulsing from far away under pastel washes of synth. "Why must I see the ending...at the beginning," sings Dienel, near the end of the song, and the clarity of her tone is all the more chilling and gorgeous because it is embedded in a murky, beat-bound arrangement.

"Icarus" is impressionistic and loosely structured. Later tracks coalesce into lavish choruses that evoke 1970s soul and mid-1980s quiet storm.  "Begin Again" reveals a diva-ish tendency to stretch one- and two-syllable words into baroque multi-toned flourishes.  Then it slathers on syncopated harmonies in the sweet, hip-shifting refrain. "Bow and Arrow" begins in the polyrhythms of African malleted percussion and finishes in lush, layered soul flourishes of a chorus that ponders, "what might set you off."

A couple of tracks late in the album hark back to Dienel's earlier, less rhythm-driven sound. "Amsterdam" is a jazzy, personal travelogue, subtly but not overwhelmingly paced by programmed drums. And lovely "Magnolias" near the end, is almost completely drum-less, allowing Dienel to explore intricate vocal passages on her own time, in her own way.

Still these cuts seem like sidesteps in an album that is otherwise a fairly bold step forward. I'm not sure what convinced Dienel, a nice girl from Scituate, that she could sing like Sade in front of a beat like Shackleton's, but she can and she does, so more power to her.  

Standout Tracks: "Bow and Arrow" "Icarus" "Magnolias" JENNIFER KELLY