by Thom JurekLet in the Light is that very place where Shannon Wright -- onetime punk rocker and now longtime singer/songwriter of sparse, emotionally loaded, simple productions -- arrives in a creative place she perhaps never imagined. The album is recorded by Andy Baker (Steve Albini has either moved on or been replaced), who is sensitive to Wright's lyrics and her aspirations toward a more expansive sound world that embraces rock, cabaret, folk, and whatever else she feels like folding into the mix. Baker also plays bass, and Wright also uses drummer Kyle Crabtree and violinist Amanda Kapousouz here. Despite the relative -- everything is relative, especially here -- density of her mix, Wright is more disciplined than ever. Her songs include the beautiful "St. Pete," where rock & roll guitars -- played by Wright, who also plays vibes and keyboards -- power chord their way through 5/8 time only to be interrupted dynamically by shimmering moments of elegant musical interludes. The opener, "Defy This Love," begins as a simple piano ditty that gives way to a song that owes a nod to Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. One can imagine this torch song being performed in front of a small crowd in a smoke-filled room in the early '30s. When the drum roll and electric guitar enter, the drama of the tune increases, and it becomes not a request, not a supplication, but a demand by the protagonist to look at the big picture and dare him to walk away. "Let in the Light" is as skeletal as it gets here, with Wright's electric guitar playing its own lyric line as she begins to offer her own voiced one. It's counterpoint that melds in beauty, not angularity. Its sadness is offset by the nursery rhyme melody that is deceptively sophisticated. Drums enter three-fourths of the way in, but by then this poetic look at love, admiration, and perhaps desperation is utterly moving and deeply haunting. ... Read More...