Hunter, Hunter

In a way, it's heartening to realize that even when blog overload and multimedia oversaturation are the new normal, it's still possible for regional artists to establish themselves on their home turf and remain largely unknown elsewhere. Still, that kind of old-school phenomenon is probably less endearing if you're Amelia Curran. One of Canada's finest singer/songwriters, Curran's trenchant style finds her maintaining an active performance schedule north of the border, but she's a shockingly unknown quantity in the U.S. The Nova Scotia-based singer-songwriter's fifth album puts Curran's tart, deadpan delivery front and center, surrounded by tasteful acoustic backing, as she puts across a fresh batch of sharply written tunes. Curran's key influences include Randy Newman and her countryman Leonard Cohen, and she expertly assimilates the latter's poetic flourishes and black humor as well as the former's masterful, poker-faced irony. Like Cohen, Curran composes songs whose lyrics conjure up powerful visions before you even begin parsing them for meaning, but once you do, the experience becomes all the richer. And on "The Mistress," her phrasing and syntax get so freewheeling that one is momentarily tempted to ponder her possible future as a rapper.