Kathy McCarty

It’s been more than ten years since the release of Austin music scene vet Kathy McCarty’s first solo disc. That CD, Dead Dog’s Eyeball, consisted entirely of clever, heartfelt, shiny arrangements of songs written by legendary oddball Austin popsmith Daniel Johnston. The record did quite a bit to raise Johnston’s songwriting stock and was itself a dry run for the recent celebrity-studded Discovered Covered Johnston tribute, but McCarty effectively disappeared from the face of the musical earth afterward. Until now.

Eyeball fans and folks who remember McCarty’s fab late-’80s art-rock bar band Glass Eye have reason to rejoice with the release of Another Day in the Sun, stuffed as it is with more cleverness, more heartfeltness and more shininess (if a bit less oddballery) than its predecessor. The mood of the songs shifts constantly, from the atmospheric lament of “Obelisk” to the slamming rocker “Basement” to the pastoral, upbeat “Skylarking.” Throughout, McCarty’s voice soars. There’s no other singer like her in rock, and with her thorough blending of technical control and piercing emotion, it would likely be a pleasure to listen to her sing the phone book (or the DSM-IV).

Fortunately, she doesn’t have to, and the new CD is as notable for its stockpile of lyrical images as for its sound. McCarty’s words range from the ethereal (“the quality of light is one I hardly ever knew / paler than champagne and colder than the moon”) to the matter-of-factly cruel (“like a bird into a mirror, mistaking the mirror for the sky / the bird will not recover and the mirror is shattered besides”). The music and the wisdom throughout Another Day certainly seem hard-won, but the spoils are all set to go to anyone who takes the time to listen.