Which leaves you with these: a deep, resonant voice; Nick Cave Gets Pleurisy-style minor chordage; Albini-recorded dry drums and kettle-cooked potato-chip guitars; use of odd meter, especially 3/4, the least odd of the odd meters but still a damned fine time signature after all is said and done; plenty of breathing room; and lyrics that don't parse well in real-time, which might mean "lyrics that don't make sense," only that isn't what I mean. What I mean instead is this: half the time, we don't know what Shannon Wright is talking about. What's worse, we don't care, because the lyrics themselves don't burst bloodily enough to make us care. That's fine, though, and even better than "fine"; on Over the Sun, Wright hasn't burdened us with a lyric sheet, which is good, because her lyrics are either feast or Irish potato famine. And in the absence of a printout, Wright's clunkers sink beneath her fuzz and crash; so after all is said and done, only the noteworthy turns of phrase leap out, which in the context of the minor chords and the deep voice and the odd meters can sometimes resonate like whale sonar. Try this one:
when all the birds have broken their own wings,
oh mercy you, and oh mercy me
or if that seems a little precious in the absence of Wright's brilliant delivery of the otherwise clunky "mercy you," then how about
just like an avalanche, he's gone