Front & center

"Let's see, I don't think `Hit Me with Your Best Shot' had come along yet," ponders the singer from her Chicago home. "No, you know what her big hit was back then? It was her big arrangement, a reggae version of `Stairway to Heaven.' I felt a little funky about that, because I wasn't sure it was the right way to do that song. She'd be up there with her leather spandex sequined outfits. And I was the back-up chick in the washed-out jeans, standing there going `whoa-hoo.' "

That's a good metaphor for Syd Straw's career: always the bridesmaid, never the one singing the reggae version of "Stairway to Heaven." But that's what she does, metaphorically speaking, on War & Peace (Capricorn), her second solo album after a seven-year gap. A cycle of emotionally frank, melodically grabbing songs that chronicle the failure of at least one relationship, it's also the first full-fledged star turn of her career. The previous album, Surprise (Virgin, 1989), had its moments, but it also had so many guest stars (those named above plus Dave Alvin, John Doe, and Van Dyke Parks) and so many dense, ambitious songs (including an arrangement of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" that was lifted by Mare Winningham in the film Georgia) that it didn't give admirers of her session work much chance to know her better.

War & Peace makes up for lost time, and you know there's catharsis going on when the singer pronounces herself "a woman of uneasy virtue" during the designated single ("Love & the Lack of It"). That title may sum up the album's subject matter, but there's more complexity and dark humor in Straw's approach. On "Time Has Done This" she explains at length why she's learned harder life lessons than her younger companion, then proceeds to make a pass at him anyway. "Madrid" counters the shock of a break-up by obsessing over a detail (roughly, "If you're going to dump me, why do it on vacation"?), as people tend to do in such situations. And "CBGB," which recalls a one-night stand originating in that New York club, sounds like a warm and fuzzy remembrance before the kicker comes around: "I was married for a while/It ended in tragedy/Oh well, enough about me." (Asked whether the song's subject has gotten back in touch yet, Straw is considerably less sentimental: "He hasn't, and I'm not exactly waiting in front of the phone.")

Part of the credit for War & Peace goes to her back-up band, the Skeletons -- makers of a handful of cult-classic albums (the last was 1992's Waiting, on Alias) and without doubt the best bald, middle-aged, garage band in Springfield, Missouri. Seemingly incapable of making too much fuss over a song, the Skeletons counter any mawkishness with the realization that wry cynicism makes for good country, angry outbursts make for good rock, and romantic self-pity makes for both. Borrowing a handful of appropriate styles -- the E Street Band on "Water Please," early/jangly R.E.M. on "X-Ray," latter-day X on "Toughest Girl in the World"-- the Skeletons give Straw another all-star cast without making her change personnel.

Gregarious and prone to conversational tangents, Straw is quick to praise the band, who will also be accompanying her at T.T. the Bear's Place this weekend. "When people ask me what took so long between albums -- and you haven't asked me yet, but I know you're going to -- I tell them that I had to upgrade to the Skeletons. I went from stars to superstars." Of her recording comeback she says, "It feels like the first time, only it isn't. Only it hurts more and stings less. And that's really true, whatever the hell I just said."

Asked about the experiences that inspired the songs, she breaks into a laugh. "Hell, I can tell a story, you know? I am trying to be as emphatic and empathic and direct and absorbing as I can possibly imagine being. All I can really say about my personal life -- even to my close friends, and there's many people that I love but very few close friends; I love many more people than I am in contact with -- all I can say is that I'm having a really fine time in my life both personally and professionally. They're coinciding, for once in my life; and it's like this amazing new drug sensation. I haven't had enough of this in my life, and you can't help waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe this time it will be like a sandal instead of a workboot."