**1/2 Parlor James

DREADFUL SORRY

(Discovery).

Singer Amy Allison (daughter of jazz singer Mose) and her partner, guitarist-bassist-vocalist Ryan Hedgecock (a founding member of Lone Justice), craft ethereal country rock that seems to hover in a sonic haze of stringed instruments, sleepy piano, and occasionally identifiable percussion. Happily for Allison, her voice is odd enough to be interesting instead of awful; imagine a Texas-bred Yoko Ono with a massive head cold after a hit of helium. (Hedgecock's voice sounds positively generic alongside his colleague's.) Likewise the production values on this six-song EP are so low they're fabulous; it's not easy to achieve that under-the seat-in-the-back-of-the-tour-bus drone in a Manhattan recording studio. But the whole mess winds up sounding so damn genuine and homespun. Almost as if you and your friends were jamming with the tape recorder on, which may or may not sound like something you'd want to play back. Still, for those with a taste for raggedy country music and a high threshold for weird singing, this just might hit the spot.

-- Joan Anderman