Crooked Smile

Album Review

In 2002, singer/songwriter Stefanie Fix took a break from her solo career with her band Limited Sight Distance — and for those who were familiar with her solo albums Footprints in the Sky (recorded in 1996, when she was still going by Stefanie Gleit) and Survival (a 1999/2000 recording), that project came as an interesting surprise. Fix, as a solo artist, had been favoring a folk-rock/adult alternative orientation, but with LSD, she detoured into a very psychedelic approach to alternative pop/rock that drew on influences ranging from Radiohead to Jefferson Airplane to Pink Floyd — a definite departure for Fix. Recorded in 2006 and released in 2007, Crooked Smile is Fix's first solo album since Survival, her first post-LSD solo album, and her third solo album overall. So, does Crooked Smile pick up where Survival left off? To a degree, it does — and yet, it would be a mistake to think that LSD didn't have at least some effect on Fix as a solo artist. In terms of songwriting, Crooked Smile is much closer to Survival than it is to the self-titled EP that LSD recorded in 2002. But production-wise, Crooked Smile does have some of LSD's psychedelic experimentation. The songwriting is earthy, rootsy, and introspective — Fix, who wrote all of the material herself, has not forsaken her singer/songwriter credentials — but Stephen Doster and Johnny Goudie (the album's producers) bring a hazy, psychedelic-minded production to tracks like "Don't Go, Don't Stay" and "Dancing with Ghosts." It's an intriguing combination — psychedelic haziness meets down-to-earth songcraft and a lot of earnest blues feeling — and it's a combination that works well for Fix on the appealing and memorable Crooked Smile.