True Detective may have raised
Lera Lynn's profile but it did her no favors. She was shackled to a stage in a gloomy room, singing dirges to an audience consisting of
Colin Farrell and
Vince Vaughn, a barroom purgatory that suggested
Lynn only existed in a sludgy solitude.
Resistor -- written and recorded with her old partner
Joshua Grange in the wake of her True Detective collaborations with
T-Bone Burnett -- may trade upon murky moments but it's textured and shaded, plus it carries a pulse. This beat, sometimes subdued and sometimes insistent, is a revelation for anybody who didn't hear 2014's excellent
The Avenues, but even those fans may be surprised by how sleek large portions of
Resistor are. "Shape Shifter," the album's opener, even harks back to the cool, relentless beat of
Stevie Nicks' new wave and
Lynn often touches on this quickened tempo, providing a nice contrast to the lingering haze from her torch songs. Even those aren't gloomy: they insinuate; they don't dwell in the darkness. There may not be many moments of light on
Resistor but they're positioned well -- the sultry, low-key groove of "Little Ruby" provides a bookend to "Shape Shifter," "Drive" moves along as swiftly as its title's promise -- so they give
Resistor shape and momentum, a construction that helps make this an ideal late-night soundtrack.