Former Throwing Muses frontwoman and Appalachian lullaby- singing mom is back with her third solo album. But just because she's calmer now than she was during her days with Throwing Muses, don't assume Sky Motel is a washed- out affair. Hersh's demons may have been vanquished, but her lyrical acuity can still pierce and unsettle. Nowadays, it's just not so strident.

Hersh revisits Throwing Muses territory by putting together a band for Sky Motel. And while I shamefully pine for her to pull off another stunning Real Ramona, I really have nothing to complain about here. Hersh sounds comfortable and relaxed, and the music reflects her even keel. Producer Trina Shoemaker has kept the music subdued and given space for Hersh's lyrics to spread out their beguiling wings. The songs have a bizarre glamour to them. Hersh beckons us into her seemingly placid world, only to whisper sweetly in our ears that all is not well here. But it's too difficult to heed a warning whispered so dearly.

Thus "White Trash Moon" warns us not to stare at the neighbor's hair or at their underwear; the freaks live next door to Hersh these days, rather than within her. During "A Cleaner Light," Hersh again warns us to "keep away from the freaks on the fringe/ They only talk to you because you give them a good excuse to cry." These songs not only advise us, but they also remind Hersh not to let go of the handrail.

On Sky Motel's standout track, "Caffeine," Hersh responds to the barking of her black dog of manic depression. She sings, "The best of us puking/ The rest of us not doing so well." She wishes that "we were lonely/ We were boring." These are her bipolar voices siren- calling again. Hersh resists by not acting upon their persuasions; she acknowledges they'll always be a part of her, and in a line of truly moving pathos, she sums up her situation: "You're driving and I'm your backseat shadow."

However, the record's single, "Echo," affirms her strength, (albeit in typically oxymoronic Hersh style). Amid Brazilia- styled lounge rhythms, Hersh proclaims that she craves "the very loudest sound/ I'm chasing everybody/ I'm shaking everybody down/I'm loving everybody." This exhilaration is matched on "Costa Rica" when she coos, "I caught us kissing on a plane in California/ It wasn't tame, but just the same/ I would love a better drug/ You lucky jerk." It's as though she used to see stability as a hallucinogen, but now, she's become resilient to the phantasmagoria of reality and aspires to try for the high that the non- manic world seeks.

Sky Motel is a powerful, graceful album of quiet victory, then. Hersh no longer considers herself aberrant. This newly- harnessed stability doesn't mean that Hersh doesn't perceive the weirdos and the crazies; it means that now she can start to comment on other people's wayward behavior rather than making uncontrolled autobiographies of her own manias.

-Paul Cooper