Ryat's voice is akin to a piece of well-crafted furniture: delicate, burnished, but firm and sturdy just the same. The surface is silky, the heart of it fervent with conviction. 

It's all the more reason that Avant Gold feels disjointed. Here, Christina Ryat's croon is steeped in the jangled mess of drum machines, white noise, and various excursions on the MicroKorg. Voice takes a back seat to the overarching agenda, the prime objective of which is to construct The Latest Thing in the electro-trash infrastructure. 

The possibilities are evident when listening to Ryat's first Album, Street Noise Orkestra, which strapped her vocals to the pilot's seat. The tracks were loose, guileless, and allowed to waltz in their allotted space. On Avant Gold, however, she plays catch-up to the cold, glittery machine of laptop gadgetry. As a result, it feels like a science project without a discernible hypothesis, let alone a conclusion. Ryat wails and muses, but without a sense of purpose, like a dancer being dragged along by a zealous partner. 

In "The Gaze," she assumes the guise of Roger Waters while a clattering of sticks and stones drone in the background. "Not For This Lifetime" is busy and harried, like a crowd of working stiffs bustling into the subway as the workday approaches. In "Superficial Fiction," the vocals are filtered and looped, wrung of all the fun. Meanwhile, synths are detuned and made to do a tribal dance. In the end, the album feels like a futuristic concept-vehicle at a car show; something to be seen and pondered, but not meant for the road. 

The album is at its best when it scales back and brushes off the coat of gold dust. In "We Walk Slow, But As Fast As Their Rush," Ryat soars to perilous heights as the drunken hymn of a grand piano keeps her afloat. "Bells" harkens back to olden days with its bombastic kick drums, loose-limbed vocals, and steadfast plucking of guitars.

 If anything, Avant Gold is a marker of Ryat's ambitions. It’s obvious that she wants to be more than just bar room songbird. But those ambitions have shot her past the mark, sending the album out of the atmosphere, plopping it on the cold terrain of a desolate planet.

by tim loc