Water for the Day (Dig)

For her third album, Shelley Short has assembled a collection of intimate songs, referring to them as "a diary of a barmy time that was 2006 and 2007." Leaving Chicago in the wake of her widely praised Captain Wildhorse, Short jettisoned her band and took up residence in Los Angeles with her new love and sometime collaborator Alexis Gideon. There she picked up the pieces of a halfrecorded album (with Jamie Carter in Chicago) and molded the collection into a coherent whole with recording engineer Raymond Richards. She is accompanied by veterans Rachel Blumberg (M Ward, Bright Eyes, Decemberists) on drums, Tiffany Kowalski (Bright Eyes) on violin, Gary James on bass, and Alexis Gideon with some clever guitar work.