Winter Wallace, Winter Wallace

Pre-emptive caveat time: the copy of Winter Wallace’s self-titled EP that a friend handed off to me isn’t technically her full four-song EP; all it has is the first two songs on the actual EP available on CDBaby. So I don’t entirely know what the whole thing sounds like, although I’m liking what I can hear.

I’ve been a little burned-out when it comes to quirky, bitter pop-rock divas lately — there’ve been way too many Tori Amos-influenced clones floating around out there, it seems like — but Wallace manages to break past that barricade and make me pay attention, nonetheless. The two tracks on here are astoundingly well-done, gorgeously layered pop-rock that’s both murky and jazzy at the same time, drifting darkly from side to side as they roll on. Asher Pudlo’s drums are solid but low-key, keeping things nailed down for the guitars, keys, and strings (courtesy of Kris Noland, Sally Tawfik, and Nolan Burke, at various points) to slide across the top.

It sounds crystalline, and I mean that in a good way. And Wallace’s breathy, octave-jumping vocals make the whole thing flow beautifully. There is an Amos resemblance, true, particularly on the interestingly-arranged, nighttime-listening second track, “Holiday” (which isn’t about an actual vacation, no, but about a person whose appearance makes things feel unusual and new and maybe(?) good), but that’s not all of it by a long shot. There’s also a fair amount of Fiona Apple’s husky, sultry croon in there, nestled alongside the quirkiness of somebody like Regina Spektor, but honestly, she makes me think of Beth Orton more than anybody else.

Like Orton, Wallace can rumble and growl deep and low when she needs to but then belt it out in the very next breath and get high and quavery the next, and she sounds the whole time not like she’s “performing,” but rather just singing like she has to sing or she’ll go crazy. And that works perfectly for a track like “Here’s To Everything,” which is bitter and self-recriminating, like Wallace is mad at herself for falling for some lame-ass line for the umpteenth time.