Following a brief moment of gender-balanced airplay in the mid '90s, modern-rock radio has increasingly swept aside female voices. Perhaps in response, a few former indie princesses have taken to softer, sometimes jazzier plains, with women like Juliana Hatfield and Jenny Toomey whittling their plaintive feedback and big, afflicted hooks to better fit their new, billowing torch songs and country-informed laments. Unfortunately, the safety of folk and jazz has sometimes been a little too safe. For her part, Tanya Donelly-who wrote the catchiest Throwing Muses song ("Not Too Soon"), played on the best Breeders album (Pod) and burned short but bright in the '90s with Belly-has transformed slowly, paring down to increasingly simpler, clearer arrangements with each album.

Based around metered lovelorn guitar and piano, Donelly's third solo LP is her most straightforward to date. The melodies are generally a bit light, especially when held up to her long catalog of mighty hooks, but her gift for the pop crescendo lingers on tracks such as "Butterfly Wing" and the lovely reunion song "Golden Mean," which transfixes by a single, strongly building piano phrase. Apparently aiming for country decorum, the album instead hits folky serenity. Donnelly's got the voice for it-slightly raspy and bright, honeyed with ebullient half-yodels, like Joni Mitchell without all the American Spirits, and with enough determination and naivether timbre to put across lines like "I might go crazy from love/ And probably I won't snap out of it." Although its forced propriety ultimately makes it less memorable than its two predecessors, Whiskey Tango is stronger than it should be, thanks to the courtly spark of Donelly's airy voice.