Tiny Vipers

Seattle folk minstrel Jesy Fortino, a.k.a. Tiny Vipers, expresses herself with languorous, smoky silences -- in the hesitations between her intricate acoustic guitar picking, slowly whistled interludes, and burdened sighs. But while the similarly mystical/mewling Joanna Newsom seems adrift in fantasy, Tiny Vipers finds wonder in being rooted firmly to the terra. Unfurling a bit ponderously, with the title track clocking in at more than ten minutes of spare strums and warbles, her second album recalls another college-radio favorite, Morphine. Fortino may not look like rain, but she sounds like it.

By Stacey Anderson