by Brett Milano

That's one reason Echoes in the Dark (Stone by Stone), a debut CD by local singer Tracie Smart, is such a grabber; much of this album is beautiful, but none of it is pretty. Smart writes cathartic songs and sings them in a deep, earth-toned voice (in terms of register, she makes Tracy Chapman sound like Juliana Hatfield). Producer Wendell Post provides a suitably somber backdrop of strings, percussion, and occasional electric guitar (played by two of Boston's best axmen, Ronnie Earl and ex-Knots & Crosses member Rick Harris). The result has the ambiance of an old Nick Drake album, or a recent one by American Music Club - yes, the best of it approaches the same haunted depths.

"I don't want people to buy my album unless it speaks to them," Smart notes over chips and salsa at Snakebite's in Porter Square. Not especially somber in conversation, she's nonetheless wearing at least two shades of black. "The first things that really touched me were Patsy Cline and Hank Williams - now, those were the loneliest little songs. Writing for me is usually an act of desperation, when I need to express something and maybe I can't tell it to anyone. Maybe someone will hear something of mine and say, 'I'm glad this person wrote this song; now I feel less alone.' All my life I've intermittently done either singing or social work, and the two are interrelated to me. But by singing you can reach people on a larger scale quicker."

Opening with the Bosnia-inspired "Hell on Earth" ("an upbeat little tune," she notes), Echoes in the Dark explores isolation and the passing of time without dropping into cliché, staying on the right side of the line between perception and self-pity. If anything sums up the album it's the Bertolt Brecht quote in the CD booklet: "In the dark times/Will there also be singing?/Yes, there will be singing/About the dark times."

"I wasn't sure whether to put that there," Smart offers. "But I related to Brecht's way of writing beautiful things that were tainted by realism. I can't write songs about how pretty the flowers are. Maybe we can do that once things have healed."

If you haven't heard of Smart, that's because she's not sure she wants you to. Now in her early 30s, she's spent a lot of time performing - scattered gigs at Passim and Christopher's, a brief stay on the West Coast, even a late-teenage spell entertaining on cruise ships (she admits under prodding that she's sung "Margaritaville"). But she's kept a suspicious distance from the music business and has mixed feelings about entering it now.

"When opportunity's knocked, I've run in the other direction. Say you're a female and you start developing breasts - all of a sudden people start looking at you differently, as if they wanted something from you. I discovered early on that because I had this voice, a lot of pretty sharky people would start coming around - 'Oh baby, we'll put you in a little outfit and make a lot of money together.' I'd say, no thanks. When they'd tell me, 'You can really go places with this song,' I'd say that I could get in the car and sing it any place I wanted to."

Still, she admits that making CDs isn't half bad. "After doing this album I can finally say, 'I can die now, I've completed something.' Now my niece can hear it and say, 'My auntie made that.'Ê"

This Monday, November 13, Smart will mark the release of her debut with an 8:30 p.m. concert at Passim in Harvard Square. Call (508) 448-5464.

WEIRDEST LOCAL ALBUM EVER

As for the lyrics...well, it's the only album this year to include the phrase "massive internal hemorrhaging." Otherwise it's a semi-coherent narrative that could be called a concept album about shit, blood, and various other fluids. There's a lot of strange sex, and a lot of characters dying in messy ways. Random extract: "The superintendent came for a visit/He was so drunk he pissed on his secretary/Inside the nurses' office they tried to give him an enema with the help of little candy-striper Lori/Cold hard-ons getting stale/Diluted yellow-brown shit now covered the floor."

It sounds like a good example of what can result when a band spend most of their studio money on LSD, but they deny that's the case. True, they did spend most of their studio money on LSD, and they ingested a good deal of it during the continuous 48-hour session at which the music on Destroy was written and recorded. But they maintain that it would've sounded this way anyhow, especially since the lyrics were the one thing written before the session.

"Drugs are important to the concept of our music, but this isn't a drug-driven album," says singer/guitarist/co-writer Matt Martin. "The good thing about acid is that it doesn't allow you to stay in one place, even if you want to." Co-writer Zephan Courtney, the drummer who recently left Stompbox (and its promising but short-lived spinoff, Slower), adds that "a lot of it was written in the van when Stompbox was on tour, and we were completely straight. The drugs were useful mainly so I could stay up for 48 hours at a time."

So if drugs didn't inspire this display, what did? "Just pathetic, obvious imitations of writers that we like, set to repetitive riffs," notes Courtney, who adds that their only starting goal was to have the album include the word "pussy" 50 times. "I want to do something that has a physical effect on people, rather than placing some neat thought in their minds. I want to put a feeling in their stomach that they don't necessarily want there, to take the thought they're avoiding and put it up their ass."

On the subject of asses, Martin adds, "It really comes down to a taboo thing; I'm tired of people with tight asses. A lot of the album is about molestation and harassment, which are common things that everybody knows about. And if you come from southern Indiana, like I do, you hear a lot of incest stories. Some things are more disturbing to me than any of our music could ever be. Like all the terrible bands that whine about their girlfriends: go get a job programming computers, you're not necessary."

Martin and Courtney are high-school friends who've been collaborating for years. Their usual writing method is to spew lyrics onto a computer, set it to random riffs in the studio, and have the engineer stop the tape after two minutes (the album's spare and echoey sound also stems from the fact that they didn't have enough acid money left over for recording tape, so they ran the tape they had at half-speed).

"Matt started the whole thing to vent his anger at me," Courtney says. "One day I wasn't around to work with him, and he got so mad that he started writing these short, sick little songs. Writing still works best when we're mad or frustrated."

Our recommendation is that Destroy be required listening for anyone who refers to Edwyn Collins as "alternative." However, don't expect a live version any time soon. The members of Chevy Heston collectively hightailed it to San Francisco soon after the album was completed.

COMING UP

Pop heaven at the Middle East Saturday, with Tracy Bonham headlining over Poundcake, Jack Drag, and the Penny Dreadfuls (ex-Atlas Shrugged). Meanwhile, the pun-poppin' Girl on Top are at Club 3, Machinery Hall are at Mama Kin, and Southern songwriter Marlee MacLeod plays the Tam with Memphis Rockabilly --- If you're not sick of "Lump" yet, the Presidents of the United States of America will undoubtedly play it at the Paradise Sunday --- My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult are at Avalon Monday --- Bill's Bar continues to book great stuff on Tuesdays, Kustomized are there this week. Meanwhile, Jefferson Starship, who were surprisingly good last time around, are at House of Blues.