On the inside front cover of the insert booklet that comes with this album, there are a pair of epigraphs: "The opposite of death is desire" and "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a ride!'" The former comes from the great American playwright Tennessee William's masterpiece "A Streetcar Named Desire." The latter, I think, comes from a fourteen-year-old girl's Myspace page. Not that I'm trying to nitpick, but this seems to illustrate a chief weakness of "Through the Gash" it's a frustrating mixture of the sublime and the utterly banal.

Let's talk about the sublime first. Hannah Fury has a beautiful voice: haunting, throaty, a little bit sexy. It's her voice that stands out most prominently among the sparse piano/guitar arrangements, often multi-tracked to form ghostly harmonies that evoke artists like Tori Amos or Enya. The production value on Fury's work has been commented on by other reviewers, and rightly so. Every element here is in perfect balance, and the album has a very full, almost decadent sound that could have come out of one of the majors. Her talents are best on display in "No Man Alive" and the delicate "You Don't Leave a Trace," two masterfully produced and performed songs that radiate with confidence.

Thematically, Fury's music seems to ruminate upon the darker side of romance in a way that calls to mind, at least superficially, the work of Nick Cave ("Girls that Glitter Love the Dark" actually contains a quote from Wim Wenders' film, "Wings of Desire"). The problem is, Fury lacks the chops necessary to really stick her fingers down the throat of love. As elegantly crafted as her work is, there's still an immaturity to the lyrical content, and ultimately, that's what's got to sell an album like this. Lines like "I am desire but you are weak/ And I despise the sound of leaks/ in veins too quiet to even speak" sound more maudlin than moving, more shrill than poignant.

In the end, "Through the Gash" is a passionate and deeply felt album from a very talented singer and producer, but it's not a fully realized work. Given enough time, Fury could be an impressive creative force, but only if she can train herself to see past the sullen cliches to the writhing viper-pit of human emotion.