***1/2 Plush

MORE YOU BECOMES YOU

(Drag City)

There's a certain strain of songwriting -- Epic Soundtracks' albums, Alex Chilton's Sister Lovers, the Beach Boys' "Surf's Up" -- that reveals what F. Scott Fitzgerald called "the real dark night of the soul." Plush's discography before More You Becomes You comprised two lush singles released four years apart, but they were enough to build a little cult around Liam Hayes's songs, which are so wrenchingly emotional that they crystallize into pure beauty. More You strips things way down -- the instrumentation is just Hayes's voice and piano (and, in one song, a flash of French horn), and the 10 songs are over in less than half an hour. The album is almost unbearably poignant at times, the sound of a man teetering on the edge, hoping that something can save him but not believing that's possible. His voice quavers thinly, jumping into a tortured falsetto and falling out again, collapsing into laughter for one shocking moment early on. But close listening to More You reveals a sort of master plan that ties together the moment-to-moment fragmentation -- each song resolves into the next one, and even when Hayes seems to wander off track, or has to circle around a single lyric before he can move on, he'll work subtle changes in the melody or chords that pull sweetness and sadness out of thin air.

-- Douglas Wolk

(Plush perform this Sunday, November 22, at T.T. the Bear's Place. Call 492-BEAR.)