With searing vocals, Michelle Willson delivers her clear-eyed statements on work, love and life from a woman's point of view. And in that regard, nearly every cut on her fourth release, on which she teams up with the tight, rocking Evil Gal Festival Orchestra, is a wake-up call.
It's not so much what she says as how she says it. On "Set You Free," an original composition, the stinging intensity with which she infuses the lines, "You tell me that I don't understand/Yeah, I know, you're such a complicated man," will make any man cringe.
On another original, "Think About Me" ("We both know it's true -- it's always, always all about you/Hey -- don't do me any favors"), she cloaks her outrage in a whisper that is more powerful than any shout or scream. The Dave Alvin tune, "The Way You Say Goodbye," meanwhile, has her singing of the hate for everything -- the way he calls her name, the look on his face, the way he pulls away from her, the way he that he talks and talks, i.e., everything she loves about him -- with a husky weariness.