The Sound of a Tree Falling

Terre Roche's first solo album, after decades of making music with her sisters in the Roches, is a self-made effort on which she plays acoustic guitar (usually two tracks' worth on each song) and sings all the vocals, except for harmonies on three songs by her sister Maggie. Her songwriting is quirky enough to make the Roches' records sound conventional. The musical structures are often loose and changeable, and the impressionistic, allusive lyrics often do not rhyme. There is an odd humor to some of the songs, such as "Nobody's Doing the Job," which details a variety of derailed careers; "New York City Pakistan," which describes the attitudes of a taxi driver; and "Blabbermouth," in which the singer starts out warning against a blabbermouth, then confesses that she is talking about herself. But many songs are hard to follow, and then the listener falls back on the textured sound of Roche's finger-picking and her attractive, breathy soprano without quite comprehending what she's singing about.