Album: Eleni Mandell

Thrill, Hot

Eleni Mandell, a native of Los Angeles, has a nice line in bohemian-chick stream-of-sensuousness on this second album, breathlessly celebrating irresistible carnal impulses in a way that inevitably brings to mind PJ Harvey. "It was a cold blue sofa and an oriental rug/ Well, your man got down and your man's on me/ Let's go!" she exults in the opening track, "Pauline", cruelly rubbing salt into a cuckold's wounds as jazzy trumpet and trombone negotiate a swaggering guitar riff straight out of the B-52s' style book. The air of predatory sexuality extends throughout much of Thrill, with Mandell boasting about how she's going to snare herself a millionaire with her "1970 Red Chevelle", punningly blurring the line between the carnal and fatal interpretations of "Taking You Out", and ruthlessly mapping out her campaign of amorous conquest in "He Thinks He's in Love", in which bongoes and marimba lend an exotic air to the cheap organ and loping double bass. Whichever hapless victim falls into her clutches is probably due for a rough ride, judging by "No Good, No More", the lyrical equivalent of premenstrual tension: "I won't be good any more," she warns; "I'll cramp around ferociously/ I'll laugh awhile and slightly howl/ Until I find you pity me." A protégée of the Viper Room founder Chuck E Weiss, Mandell has found her perfect partner in guitarist Brian Kehew, whose arrangements here marshal an intriguing palette of guitars, keyboards, percussion, pedal steel, marimba, zither, accordion, horns and strings into intriguing shapes whose subtlety complements the singer's exuberance perfectly.