*** Diane Izzo

ONE

(Sugar Free)

A young Chicago songstress who recorded four-track tunes in the privacy of her own bedroom before Brad Wood took her into the studio with a backing band for this indie debut, Diane Izzo certainly shares some biographical details with Liz Phair. And, though her hair's darker, she shows some physical resemblance to Phair early on in One, thanks to the blunt tone and curvaceous melody of her vocals on the disc's second tune, "The Real One."

But it's not long before Izzo is flexing and stretching that voice up and down, digging for deeper notes almost out of her range in songs littered with fragments of ominous religious-tinged poetry ("Choking on the exodus and the revolution/You holy martyrs, its your first communion") in a manner that can't help bringing to mind the young Patti Smith doing her Dylan thing. Only Smith was always fighting the tug of a garage band who wanted to be rock-and-roll stars, whereas Izzo's prickly free verse settles comfortably against a backdrop of Eastern-inflected guitar rock that evokes some of the same hoodoo love vibes as PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love. Either way, Izzo's in good company.

-- Matt Ashare