As an artist and musician, Dawn Landes is happy on either side of the mixing desk. By day, she rides the faders as a recording engineer, and has worked with a variety of bands including Hem, Ryan Adams, and Philip Glass. At night, she is a performing artist of some repute, having supported the likes of Jose Gonzalez, Le Tigre, Midlake and M83. She is also an accomplished songwriter, turning her multi-instrumentalist hands to a variety of talents on this, her second full length album. Recorded with various members of Hem, Landes locked herself into her studio alone for a week, tinkering with the production to give it a sleek shine, smooth and glossy but with enough individual quirkiness to keep it interesting.It opens with 'Bodyguard', a relatively straight-forward piece of AOR, repetitive chorus and all. It’s on the second track 'I Don’t Need No Man' that things start to get interesting, with its Pippin Fort drums clonging and plodding whilst guitars weave in and out. Her voice is strong but subtle, smoothly powerful ”“ never too thick and cloying. Ok, so she does sing about a train and go “Whoo-hoo-Hoo!”, but we can forgive that when the music is this good. 'Twilight' is a really good piece of alt-folk, starting with a quiet piece of picked guitar work, drifting along before bursting into life in its conclusion. Some tracks echo back to the days of Throwing Muses, 'Private Little Hell' in particular, and the excellent country sway of 'Tired Of This Life'.Not all songs succeed, and the bad ones fail spectacularly. 'Picture Show' is a mess, trying far to hard to be quirky with banal lyrics of forced jollity and bursts of swishy drums and clipped organs. 'Kids In A Play' however makes up for this mis-step, a passionate vocal carrying the song into 'Toy Piano', a delightful instrumental with a child-like melody. When this album works best though is in the quiet moments, such as 'Dig Me a Hole', and the dreamlike 'I’m In Love With The Night'. This is the equal of the current crop of female vocalists, and despite the odd duff track is a polished and well-produced release. 68%Links Dawn Landes [official site] [myspace]