**1/2 Freakwater

ENDTIME

(Thrill Jockey)

Led by singer-writers Cathy Irwin and Janet Bean, and featuring multi-instrumentalist David Wayne Gay, Freakwater were playing their own special brand of skewed alterna-country before that particular industry pigeonhole was invented. On Endtime the trio continue to marry their union of Carter Family harmonies, country-blues despondency, and raw emotion to a rather desolate world view. The band's sound remains as stark as ever: ghostly banjos, lonesome fiddles, and drumming from guest artist Eric Heywood (Son Volt, Richard Buckner) that sounds like an undertaker pounding nails into a coffin (or a cross). The tunes are crammed with unsettling characters like women who'll suck the fillings out of your mouth when you kiss them and bartenders who take half an hour to get you a beer. Unlike most country songsmiths, Bean and Irwin don't avoid ambiguities and contradictions -- things rarely play out in the linear fashion of most popular country tunes. The murky production adds a low-rent charm to the proceedings, but often it also makes the lyrics hard to understand, and since a major part of the Irwin-and-Bean charm is their witty wordplay, that's the album's one drawback.

-- J. Poet