LAURA Veirs calls her band the Tortured Souls, only too aware that her existential records are not the happiest. Happy, no, but hypnotic, yes.

Carbon Glacier is the third album by the poetic Seattle singer-songwriter who grew up beneath the Colorado Rocky Mountains, from where she explored the vast outdoors of the American West.

In the winter months of 2003 she explored nature and the elements once more, recording stream-of-consciousness thoughts in her journal to produce 13 impressionistic, strangely beautiful, wintry imagery that are both free flowing in their words yet frozen in the rueful moment. Kurt Cobain and Virginia Woolf, Moby Dick and Monet, drum loops and viola all play their part in the kind of visionary record last made by Kate Bush.

Po'Girl are Trish Klein, of the Be Good Tanyas, and Allison Russell, from Montreal's Fear Of Drinking, and this down-home duo let the day glide by in a mess of the bruised blues, late-night jazz, bleak folk and sad country. The harmonies are natural and spontaneous, the musicianship less pristine than Klein's past work, and if Norah Jones is too perfect for you, please bathe in Po'Girl's wilder allure.

Updated: 08:37 Thursday, April 01, 2004