Like most of the staff writers here at Green Man Review, I sometimes get e-mail from readers commenting on one of the reviews I've written. I've never received more than one comment on any of my reviews, excepting one. Every couple of months or so, I receive an e-mail commenting on my review from early 2003 of Quick Look, the debut album from the Austrian-born singer Pina. I've only had one of these comments, dated October 30, 2003, posted in the "Letters" section here, because they all say pretty much the same thing; the writer expresses relief and gratitude that he or she was not the only person so strongly moved by Pina's music. Indeed, I expressed some frustration in my review that all the comments on Quick Look that I read online were written by people who evidently missed whatever it was that grabbed me. Pina is a unique and challenging artist whose wildly creative vocal and instrumental arrangements, rooted in modern rock but incorporating primal elements that certainly transcend the rock genre, have hit a few listeners straight through the heart and slammed them against the wall while sailing clear over many other listeners' heads. In other words, some people "get it," and some people don't. Needless to say it was with great anticipation that I listened to Pina's new album which she titled, perhaps ironically, Guess You Got It.

A couple of things have changed for Pina since Quick Look, beginning with her record label. PRE Records was set up as a subdivision of Peter Gabriel's RealWorld Records, in order to better accommodate the label's more rock oriented artists like Pina. In addition, Pina was given the opportunity to record and produce the new album at her home in West Cork, Ireland, with Tchad Blake coming in later to oversee the mixing. Only three people perform on Guess You Got It -- Pina plays an assortment of guitars and keyboards, her boyfriend Andy Hogg plays drums and lead guitar, and Johnny Scott plays bass. Any initial expectation that a homemade recording featuring just three musicians will sound sparse and intimate would be misleading, however. Pina likes to layer together several vocal and instrumental tracks per song, and as a result Guess You Got It has a full band sound. The album rocks out more than Quick Look did, but more significantly, Pina makes a determined effort to make peace with the divorce and heartbreak that dominated the lyrics of her first album and focus on the happier, more stable situation she is in now.

Two important things remain the same with Pina, though. First, the dominant feature of the new CD, as was the case with Quick Look, is Pina's voice. Her vocals, still tinged with a strong Viennese accent, continue to defy an easy description. Calling her voice "husky" would be incomplete, and calling it "feline" as a few other reviewers have done would miss the mark entirely. She has been compared to the folk singer Melanie, and while "Lay Down" is the only Melanie song I know, I do see at least a little similarity. While Pina differs greatly from both Beth Orton and Kate Bush, she does possess the former's emotional power and the latter's willingness to try just about anything with her voice and somehow get it to work. The second thing that hasn't changed since Quick Look is Pina's ability to make a great album. Guess You Got It is yet another sequence of songs that challenge the listener and defy conventional notions of how rock music is supposed to sound, while also remaining catchy, melodic, and eminently soulful.

The disc opens with the swampy, gospel-tinged "I Was Walking." This song sets the tone for the new album while making a clear break from Quick Look. Pina's divorce, coupled with the passing of her grandfather, haunted the lyrics of her first CD. In "I Was Walking," however, Pina sings about taking her emotional baggage and burying it deep in the ground. Musically, the song leads in with Pina strumming her acoustic guitar much like she did on most of Quick Look, but by the end of the song the electric guitars have come on in full force; they do not relinquish control for the rest of Guess you Got It. Her trademark multi-tracked vocal harmonies remain evident on "I Was Walking" and throughout the new disc. The call-and-response in the verses of this song sounded strident and jarring at first hearing, but resisting the urge to sing along with it became harder on repeated listens. "Brand New Face" depicts an internal conversation between conflicting sides of Pina's personality. The wiser half narrates, commenting on the naive half's romantic misadventures. "And cold was the water," Pina sings, "she didn't look before she jumped." This song also features some fine slide guitar work (presumably by Hogg), along with a clear indication of Pina's improved ability on piano and organ. Pina had played most of the keyboards on Quick Look, but she generally stayed away from the piano. For this disc, by contrast, she has developed a distinctively bouncy style on the piano which really brightens the tone of the album even when the lyrics remain somewhat dark. After this, Pina waxes sentimental for her native Austria with "Burning." In this song Pina feeds some of her backing vocals through an amplifier to provide some distortion; during the bridge, it sounds as though an air-raid siren is going off in the background.

Despite boasting the prettiest melody on the disc, "Butterfly" includes a couple of dissonant elements in the arrangement. Pina continues to challenge the listener with her vocals here, reciting the lyrics to the bridge in several different registers, all of which clash with each other. During the instrumental break, Pina provides nice orchestral-sounding accompaniment on keyboards, while Hogg performs some hip-hop style scratching effects. The first half of Guess You Got It concludes with "On Such A Lovely Day," the disc's best and most ambitious track. Pina sings here about shrugging off the coldness of an ex-lover while things in her life are otherwise looking up. Like "Butterfly," this song features some scratching and other electronic effects, but here these effects are more subtle than intrusive, and everything Pina tries on this song really works. "On Such A Lovely Day" starts out as a soft, piano-driven piece in 3/4 time which oscillates between G minor and G major, but then the guitars kick in and the chorus switches to a 4/4 rhythm. The real payoff for the song, though, comes in the build-up to the climax. Pina emits a series of staggered moans, each one louder, higher, and more earnest than the previous one, while underneath it she plays increasingly higher up on the piano and mercilessly pummels a Hammond organ into submission. This little sonic explosion is the most inspired ten seconds of music that I have heard in quite some time.

The next song, "Dark Blue And Gold," also recounts a meeting between Pina and an ex-lover. Musically, it's a somber waltz reminiscent of the song "Josephine" off of Quick Look, if a bit more electric in the instrumentation. The "solo" in the instrumental break is actually Pina's distorted voice fed through an amp, although it may take a few listens to distinguish it from an electric guitar. After this, Guess You Got It perks up significantly with the next two songs. The joyous "Bucket of Love" pays tribute to Pina's current romance, and is easily the happiest song she has recorded to date. She punctuates each verse with a high, ecstatic "Yeah!" that sounds perfectly natural once it's expected. "Luise Luise," a message to Pina's eight-year-old daughter, combines the anguish of a temporary separation with the hope of a joyful reunion. Pina keeps the music for this song mostly bouncy and upbeat, but a music box provides a clever bit of discord and polyrhythm at one point.

In the disc's penultimate song, the energetic rocker "You Can't Be My Lover," Pina refuses to settle for the wrong person. The song peaks with a fierce guitar solo at the end; sometimes it's easy to forget how effective guitar solos can be when they aren't overused or clichéd. Guess You Got It concludes with "Sweet Love," a love song in triple time. From a lyrical perspective, it made sense to finish with a positive song about the present instead of a negative song about the past. The chorus here is a little too melodramatic, however, and the "Sweet Love" sounds anticlimactic in comparison to the more potent song that preceded it.

Pina bursts with ideas, to a degree that few artists creating music today can match. Once again, she has succeeded in converting a great many of her ideas into a powerful collection of songs. Indeed, if any criticism of Guess You Got It can be made at all, it is that some of the songs have a few too many things going on at once, and a little more simplicity wouldn't have hurt the album. Pina demonstrates this point herself, with scaled-down acoustic versions of four of the new songs available for downloading on her Web site.

All four of these performances hold up well, and the acoustic version of "Butterfly" improves on the CD version. Still, the album contains ten solid songs, and at least three -- "I Was Walking," "Bucket of Love," and especially "On Such A Lovely Day" -- would go down in my book as classics. Guess You Got It reinforces the impression Pina made with Quick Look that she is a special and essential musical force, demanding the attention of any serious music listener. If any more inventive, inspired, or consistently fascinating musical acts than Pina have emerged in this decade, I would love to hear them.