Dayna Kurtz has been touring for about a decade, and has honed the art of the finely crafted folk-rock song until everything she sings, no matter how new, fits her like a well-worn glove or a favorite old pair of work boots. Postcards, her first full-length studio-produced release, offers 10 highly personal and powerful songs.

Kurtz plays acoustic and slide guitar in an idiosyncratic, hard-edged and calculatedly ragged way. Her voice is her best instrument, though, capable of jagged soaring like Janis Joplin or sweet soul crooning like Dusty Springfield.

She puts it to good use on every track on Postcards, from the cabaret waltz of the opening track, "Fred Astaire," to the folktronica of "Somebody Leave a Light On." The title track is a mesmerizing bit of soulful blues, "Monroe" and "Paterson" are packed with Springsteen-esque lyrics and "Satisfied" is sad lullaby of loss delivered in a lilting singsong.

Twin high points are "Just Like Jack," a blackly humorous look at small-town life through the eyes of a young woman seduced by a traveling Beat poet, and "Love Gets in the Way," a bittersweet lament with a deep soul groove. The whole record, though, is a treasure hunt, full of musical and lyrical nuggets, like this one from "Fred Astaire:" "And what do you remember/after too much sweet wine/that you woke up hungover/or that you had a good time?" Listening to Dayna Kurtz is a little bit like that, a mesmerizing and intoxicating experience that can be so intense at times that it leaves you feeling punch-drunk and dazed.

 [Gary Whitehouse]