Who's Got Trouble?

1	New Casablanca 3:07
2	I Close My Eyes 3:55
3	Someday 2:11
4	Lost in a Dream 4:37
5	Little Black Mess 4:32
6	Mexican Boyfriend 3:40
7	The Fat Lady of Limbourg 4:13
8	2 Far 2:55
9	Baby Girls 5:20
10	It Got All Black 4:02
11	I Will Go Quietly 4:48

Barnes & Noble

If Shivaree frontwoman Ambrosia Parsley didn't exist, we'd need some sort of post-millennial Kurt Weill to invent her. Infusing her songs with a mercurial charm that's one part torch singer, one part finger-popping beatnik, she never fails to bewitch, bother, and bewilder. That's clear from the onset of the free-floating trio's first full-length outing in nearly five years. Opening with the plaintive piano ballad "New Casablanca," Trouble quickly dives into a murkier emotional space on the cautionary slink-fest "I Close My Eyes." Longtime cohorts Duke McVinnie and Danny McGough -- on guitar and organ, respectively -- push things off kilter at regular intervals, nudging "It All Went Black" into Tejano territory that'd do Willie Nelson proud and winding "The Fat Lady of Limbourg" in layers of Tom Waits-styled surrealism. It's Parsley, however, who really carries the show, swapping little-girl-lost innocence for Mae West bawdiness at the drop of a hat -- and whether she's dodging it or making it, you can rest assured that trouble is always hovering enticingly around her. David Sprague

All Music Guide

The velvety torch-and-twang tenor of singer/songwriter Ambrosia Parsley -- her name alone is delicious -- permeates Shivaree's third full-length record like smoke through a saloon filled with carnies. The trio's sophisticated blend of spacious alt-country and dark pop with Tin Pan Alley sensibilities -- keyboardist Danny McGough toured with Tom Waits -- more than lives up to the band name, which is derived from the French word "charivari," meaning "a noisy mock serenade (made by banging pans and kettles) to a newly married couple." Parsley, who sounds like a mischievous composite of Neko Case, Jill Sobule, and Aimee Mann, feels just as natural assuming the role of torchy vamp ("Lost in a Dream") as she does a wounded heart pining for her "Mexican Boyfriend," and "Little Black Mess," with its sensuous strings and jazzy piano, comes off like a moon-drunk cross between Björk and Nick Cave. At its core, Who's Got Trouble? is the soundtrack to a late-night road trip, and nowhere is that more apparent than on the subtle closer, "I Will Go Quietly." With its atmospheric banjo bookends and lonely last-cigarette-before-the-sun-comes-up imagery, it leaves the listener with an alarming sense of place and an unsettling case of Twin Peaks creeps. Reverend Lee Power