Don’t Rock The Boat, Sink The Fucker

Des Ark initially sounds like dewy and trembling folk music, on the order of Lisa Germano or Laura Veirs. Hold on. In case the song titles don't immediately give the game away — "My Saddle Is Waitin' (Jump On It"), "Girls Get Ruff," and the magnificent "Bonne Chance, Asshole," — there is some serious mischief lurking beneath that springwater pure voice. The sound may be fragile, lovely, and crystalline, but the sensibility it masks is surprisingly, and delightfully, acid. Walls of guitars crash in like marauding tribes occasionally, to put a fine point on it, but for the most part, Des Ark couches her kiss-offs in a coo.