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![[Off The Record]](/images/boston/music/offtherecord_header.gif){kind=small}
 Shannon Wright DYED IN THE WOOL (QUARTERSTICK)
The third full-length from former Crowsdell gal Shannon Wright is as beautiful as it is intensely miserable. Pained and spare but in the end bitterly redeeming, it explodes in a catharsis that ranges from delicate moan to primal scream. Wright’s vocal jolts often deliver the same tingle as do Patti Smith, Diamanda Galás, Nico, and early PJ Harvey. That may be a lot of name dropping to shackle a young talent with, but she doesn’t seem the type to break under the weight. On stage, she occasionally rams home a point by backing several feet off her microphone to sing, quite audibly, over the din. Some of this live dynamic makes its way onto Dyed in the Wool, an album that sounds as though it had been purposely recorded in the verge-of-distorting red zone; it emphasizes the aggressive side of Wright’s songs as it pulls reworkings of tracks from her recent Perishable Goods EP from their exotic murk into a new focus. Unsettling, gothic eeriness pervades arrangements that pit her guitar and piano against the jacked-up drumming of Brian Teasley of Man . . . or Astroman? (Shannon Wright performs this Tuesday, October 2, with Quasi and the Magic Magicians downstairs at the Middle East. Call 617-864-EAST.)
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