*1/2 JANA McCALL

(Up)

Eight years or so ago, Jana McCall played bass in a Seattle band of women. Dickless weren't what you'd call subtle, but they were vigorous, funny and terse -- in short, exactly the opposite of this solo debut. Jana McCall doesn't rock, it oozes, drenched in Angelo Badalamenti-style reverb and inching along. Almost every song circles droningly around two or three minor chords, on and on, never going anywhere in particular.

Mood music like this can be made to work by a particularly distinguished vocal performance, or by especially powerful lyrics, or by devotion to melody or mood -- Mazzy Star have pulled it off -- but McCall never rouses herself from her torpor. She sings like a ventriloquist, never quite making her words clear; when they are audible, they're not too hot. Her melodies barely make it beyond a range of a few notes, and none of them sticks in the memory past the last note's throbbing fade-out. It's pretty in a background-music sort of way, but that's all.

-- Douglas Wolk