Indoor Universe

Like Dick Clark or Matlock, the first solo album from ex-Tarnation lead singer Paula Frazer seems to exist in a vacuum, completely untouched by the markings of time. Frazer sings like she’s Roy Orbison’s long-lost sister, her voice swooping in and out of her heartbroken tunes with operatic grace. The album’s soft, flowing orchestration is sweetened by a gentle country twang, but Indoor Universe lacks the sort of grit that makes sad-eyed country music put a lump in your throat. It also lacks the oddball flavor that made Tarnation’s albums delightfully strange. “Stay As You Are,” a haunted, desert-town spaghetti western of a song, overcomes these deficiencies, as does the forlorn lament, “We Met by the Love-Lies-Bleeding.” Too often, though, Frazer seems hesitant to get inside these songs; instead she floats a few feet above them, refusing to get her hands dirty with the messy emotions they hint at—a problem in any time period.