Gramophone is the band you want to have playing the very first time you have sex with the person who you already know is going to break your heart. Dark, seductive and doomed, Gramophone unrolls the rhythm of the damned — one person damned because they want to care more than is really smart to do, and the other person damned because they couldn't care less about the fact they're going to crush someone else's spirit under their boot and just keep going.

Here's the question: Which of the damned would you prefer to be? Think carefully. There's a different sort of Hell waiting for you depending on your answer. No matter what, though, Hell is on the way, borne on the voice of an angel.

That angel being Penny McConnell, who, by the lyrics, has chosen to be the crusher rather than the crushee. Sliding her tone from understated Harriet Wheeler to medicated Bjork, McConnell chronicles one romantic disaster after the next, though she does so advertising up front that she's just bad news all the way around. "If I were you I think I'd let me go," she advises some poor bastard in "Lonely Machine." Not that he listens. Not that they ever listen. It takes two to tumble into the barbed wire pit.

At least McConnell makes it a lovely tumble — she projects "all screwed up" in that languid way that men sense as a challenge: Sure, she's chewed up and spit out every other guy that's come within a 30-yard radius of her, but I can handle her. Hope springs eternal. Guys, here's a tip: When some woman sings "Cigarettes on linoleum/ I walk barefoot on the butts," as McConnell does in the deceptively sprightly "Brighton Rocks," don't walk away. Run as fast as your deluded little feet will carry you. Of course, what do I know. Fine, go ahead. Mazel tov, kids. Try not to splatter too much when you finally leap off the cliff.

McConnell's bruised angel act is surrounded by the perfect lush darkness: Real strings swelling in the dusky mid-range rather than the sweet high end, canned, scratchy drumbeats, and guitars that tastefully feedback at all the right places. David Picking and Jon Colton, Gramophone's instrumentalists, have certainly done their homework; there's very little misstep here. Fast beats are not the order of the day (The Garbage-y "Fill" is as fast as it goes, and that's merely an aggressive mid-tempo), but there's more than enough drama already.

"I give you hope, but you could be replaced," McConnell sings in the cheerfully titled "Dead Girls Don't Say No." That's about as cheerful as you're going to get on Gramophone, or get from Gramophone. I really like this album and I think there's a certain subset of people who will really like it, too, the sort of people who have self-inflicted cigarette burns on their psyche (and those who don't, but like to pretend they do, from time to time). But remember: If any part of this album reminds you of a relationship you're currently in, start saving now for therapy. Don't bother with the couples counseling. It's already too late for that.

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Review by John Scalzi

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This review originally appeared at IndieCrit.com -- reviews of alternative music.