**1/2 Jenny Mae

DON'T WAIT UP FOR ME

(Anyway)

On her promising 1995 debut, There's a Bar Around the Corner . . . Assholes (Anyway), Columbus indie gal Jenny Mae Olds offered interpretations of Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun" and Billie Holiday's "Don't Explain," which revealed more about her record collection than it did about her talents as a singer or instrumentalist. This time she tackles the Cole Porter standard "Night and Day," which gives her a chance to draw on those trumpet chops she picked up playing in the Ohio State University marching band and, given her lethargic vocal delivery, brings to mind the rather cool concept of a female Chet Baker.

Elsewhere Olds comes on more like a less perky or prickly Liz Phair, pining moodily "A cowboy who wakes up early/But I keep staying out drinking past three" with the torchy and slightly twangy "Cowboy Song" (which isn't as cloying or as catchy as Paula Cole's "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone") and cooing coolly about "Dairy Boy" against a pleasant little faux disco groove. She's enough of an inspired dabbler to keep things interesting as she jumps from the piano balladry of the incongruously titled "Ho Bitch" to the tight Britty guitar rock of "Drapes," to the loose soul-inflected lite pop of "Valentines Day," but she's not ambitious enough to keep from tossing off lyrics about how bummed out she is.

-- Matt Ashare