Not knowing the kind of person Nina Nastasia is, I can only assume she fashions a frock coat. She must be part-femme fatale, part-Willa Cather protagonist. She wears her frock coat (black in color) during every season ”” most comfortably in autumn. The long sleeves and collar are tawdry. There are buttons missing, but she doesn't revel in that. She wears Saint Audrey's lace around her neck. She can't get Steve Albini in anything besides a short-sleeve t-shirt. Nina says wonderful things. "In the back of the house in the room I used to sleep/ I woke up and smelt burning wires/ For a month I wasn't me/ A thief would wait for me outside/ And there were nights I would let him in/ No one ever found out.” Her words read and speak like a haunting. Like when a drunk driver dies in a canal. Nina is the soothing moment that follows searing pain. The quiet affairs that are Nina's songs are the nursing of wounds ”” wounds courtesy of dogs; bites, snags, tears. She stands in a tub, the water only a few inches high, touching her ankles. One can hear an electrical device splash into the basin and the subsequent sizzle. By the end of the album, Nina is spreading Noxzema over your body. Don't ask why Albini is sitting in the kitchen without his glasses on. Don't ask.
1. Jim's Room
2. Brad Haunts a Party
3. Our Day Trip
4. Counting Up Your Bones
5. Dumb I Am
6. Why Don't You Stay Home
7. One Old Woman
8. Treehouse Song
9. Lee
10. Settling Song
11. Bird of Cuzco
12. If We Go to the West
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