*** Mark Mulcahy

FATHERING

(Mezzotint)

With his longtime New Haven-based band Miracle Legion now kaput, singer Mark Mulcahy stakes his solo claim on semi-acoustic rock. The songs are wound-up and intensely personal. The music can be tense and edgy, as on the title track, where a repeating guitar figure booms with menace as Mulcahy breathes, cries, and moans about emotionally twisted childhoods spilling into confused adult relationships. Or the songs will ring with the sprightly strum of acoustic guitar and Mulcahy's strong vocal melodies, which often soar into idiosyncratic falsetto singing. Mulcahy is experimenting with his voice here, finding new sounds to bring his odd and often dour characters to life. The sense of alienation and ennui that runs through Fathering seems to parallel his feelings about the slow demise of Miracle Legion, who wasted away as their career was put on hold by a big-label deal that went south. His re-emergence as a lone troubadour with a dark worldview is a triumph of sorts, and even the sourest of these songs has an underpinning of hope. (Write to Mezzotint at Box 1634, New Haven, Connecticut 06507.)

-- Ted Drozdowski