As the former leader of influential early ’90s indie bands Tsunami and Grenadine and the head of the groundbreaking Simple Machines label, Jenny Toomey has become synonymous with punk rock overachievement. It’s therefore unsurprising that her solo debut, Antidote, is a folk-meets-country-meets-torch two-disc outing with nerve and ambition to spare. Instead of the distortion-swaddled, guitar-based punk-folk with which Toomey has come to be associated, Antidote is a lo-fi folkie record laced with violins and horns and nods to early ’60s pop: think of it as Tara Key meets Brenda Lee.
Antidote is divided into two discs named after the cities in which they were recorded. The first represents Toomey’s Chicago sessions, and includes fitting guest turns by local luminaries such as Andrew Bird and Edith Frost. Alternately breezy and somber, it’s comprised mostly of strummy, slow-to-midtempo, almost-pop tracks seeded with the occasional cello. The second disc, recorded in Nashville with members of Lambchop, is peppier and more countrified, and contains, among other things, an unexpectedly pretty cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “Fool For You” that sounds like Mandy Barnett gone indie.
Toomey’s familiarly deft and twisting wordplay is everywhere in evidence, and while the I-I-I lyrics now seem a little dated in their self-absorption, that’s hardly Toomey’s fault, and at least she’s stopped singing about the perils of being a label head, a problem to which exactly ten people could relate. Toomey’s voice isn’t always up to the challenge implicit in her record’s richer arrangements, though, and Antidote is frequently more interesting than good, an admirable example of an artist’s reach exceeding her grasp.