On her debut album, Massachusetts native Casey Dienel spells Nellie McKay for a bit while the other brash young blonde piano player works through her record-label difficulties. Dienel isn't entirely McKay redux: the Broadway and hip-hop influences are missing on Wind-Up Canary, Dienel's piano playing sounds a little more boogie-woogie than cocktail jazzy, and her pre-rock vocal idol is more likely to be Edith Piaf than Doris Day. Still, Dienel's cutting lyrics about rueful love affairs (Baby James, the Boston-specific townie romance Frankie and Annette) and bizarre character studies (the album-opening Doctor Monroe, a goofily surreal story about a drunk on a train) will feel comfortably familiar to McKay fans, and there's an undeniable vocal similarity on songs like the somewhat melancholy Cabin Fever. To her credit, Dienel has a sparkling personality all her own, giving Wind-Up Canary a dry, mordant wit that's much less clever-clever than McKay's sometimes exhausting precociousness, and she's an impressively strong melodicist. Like McKay, Sarah Sharp and Sylvie Lewis -- even Dienel's Boston buddy Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls, to some extent, and yes, also Norah Jones -- Casey Dienel has updated the tradition of wide-ranging, jazz-influenced female singer/songwriters that's largely lain fallow since the heydays of Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, and Wind-Up Canary is a compelling, highly enjoyable debut. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi

1		Doctor Monroe
2		Everything
3		Baby James
4		Cabin Fever
5		Frankie and Annette
6		The Coffee Beanery
7		Embroidery
8		Old Man
9		Stationary
10		Tundra
11		All or Nothing
12		The La La Song

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