The Story

One of the most appealing qualities of Brandi Carlile's debut album was that it had an ethereal quality, unattached to style or sound or time. Since she was a singer/songwriter playing an acoustic guitar, there were undoubtedly elements of folk, but Carlile's songwriting was elliptical and elastic, giving her plenty of room to indulge her powerful voice, a voice that had echoes of

Jeff Buckley

and

Thom Yorke

. This gave

Brandi Carlile

a spacey, dreamy quality, but for as good as it was, the album didn't achieve much attention initially apart from some rave reviews. Still, Carlile and the label slowly worked the record, getting some songs onto Grey's Anatomy as they laid the groundwork for her second album, The Story, which was designed to be her big breakthrough. Producer

T-Bone Burnett

-- a singer/songwriter in his own right, but better known as the man behind

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

and the man who helmed records for

Counting Crows

,

Roy Orbison

,

Gillian Welch

, and his wife

Sam Phillips

-- was brought aboard to help streamline some of Carlile's eccentricities without watering down her music, a task he performs admirably on The Story. Part of the streamlining process involves accentuating the arty undercurrents that ran throughout her debut -- a move that highlights her ambition and helps push her out of the rootless ether and into something that sounds distinctly contemporary. In other words, Carlile's

Buckley

and

Yorke

influences are brought to the forefront here -- not just in her soaring, neo-operatic vocals, either, but also how her writing is at once more brooding, dramatic, and open-ended than it was on the debut -- which makes her sound modern, if perhaps a bit too indebted to her idols. If Carlile openly wears her influences on her sleeve on The Story, she is nevertheless th