Concrete Blonde singer Johnette Napolitano will release her somewhat otherworldly debut solo album Sketchbook, later this month through the band's Web site, www.concreteblondeofficialwebsite.com. The first pressing of the album, which is currently available for order, will be a limited edition set of 2,500, with each copy numbered and autographed.

"I've been writing a lot of stuff that didn't seem to fit anywhere," says Napolitano of the impetus for the solo album. "I'm a bass player so I've always liked a good groove, and I like melody textures too. I wanted to hear what it would sound like to have hard-edge guitars with a beautiful melody. The Young Gods did a Kurt Weill album with classic songs that sound like somebody singing with a chainsaw in their throat. I've always liked that yin and yang of things."

Recorded in the Brando room of her Los Angeles home -- so named for the autographed photo of the legendary actor that hangs there, one that surfaced in Napolitano's mailbox after she left a tributary note in his mailbox -- Napolitano handled most of the instruments herself. She did get a bit of help from Danny Montgomery of Pretty and Twisted on "creepy slide guitar and dobro," and from George Holstein, who contributed "a patchwork quilt of whatever."

Interspersed within the album's sixteen songs are excerpted musings from Coast to Coast, the radio show hosted by the paranormal-obsessed Art Bell. "I'm a big Art Bell fan," Napolitano says, "and Sean David Morton, the psychic, was on one night, and I put the mike up to the tape deck. It was a very cool speech about the earth being shifted off its axis by nuclear testing --basically end-of-the-world kind of stuff that's more interesting than anything I can do -- and I put vocals behind it. It makes for an interesting track."

Sketchbook track listing:

Difficult Woman
Full Moon Mix
Mississippi George
Shocking
Whalecalls
Summer Rain
Sweat on the Saddle
Like a Cloud
Freaky Dreaming
Superstar
Prayer
Why Not Stand Down
Amazon
Giant Gongs and Backwards Guitars
Mood Music
When I'm Gone

COLIN DEVENISH
(November 5, 2002)