Don't let the title of the Indigo Girls' fifth full-length studio album fool you. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have not traded in their earnestly literate pop for a musical ride along the murky waterways of the South. Instead, they have moved beyond the tenuous yet optimistic first steps of post-graduation freedom for a complex look at real relationships. While their early songs had all the ebullient naiveté of a kid sneaking off with the family car keys, Swamp Ophelia is about the keys that sometimes open – and sometimes fail to open – the mysteries of love.

Always capable of heartfelt lyrics, Ray and Saliers have grown, and on Swamp Ophelia they tackle not only the ups and downs of love ("Fugitive," "Power of Two," "Mystery") but also the horrors of the Holocaust ("This Train Revised"), as well as the frightening misadventures of youthful initiations ("Dead Man's Hill").

Ray's "Touch Me Fall" is the thematic centerpiece of this collection. On it, Ray sings about feeling "torn down" but pleads, "Let your waters let me drown," no doubt in love. Musically, the denser, more-layered sound on Swamp Ophelia leaps beyond Ray's anthemicrock leanings and the unadulterated gentleness of Saliers' songs. Additional instrumentation, including Chuck Leavell's melodic keyboards, broadens the scope of the duo's earlier sound. Cello (Jane Scarpantoni), penny whistle, mandolin and violin (Lisa Germano), along with trumpet, fluegelhorn and accordion, bring to Swamp Ophelia colors as varied and subtle as the emotions Ray and Saliers are trying to express. (RS 689)

STEVE MATTEO