Consumer Guide Album

Bettie Serveert: Private Suit [Import, 2000]
Crisply songful after years of feedback and drone, it's Carol Van Dyk-not-Dijk and her backup band. About time, too--not because there's anything wrong with feedback or drone, but because neither should preclude songs when you proffer yourself as a pensive woman who takes the occasional Tylenol and deserves someone she can love back. "Unsound" is their most clearly irresistible ever, and the aural nimbi that surround or trail after the others never obscure Van Dyk's lines of thought. A-