"Happiness is such a personal thing, I'll just leave it alone," purrs Tara Angell, the latest folk-rock-country ingenue. In fact, she doesn't so much ignore happiness as stab it through the heart with a rusty knife.

What sets Angell's bald honesty and still-raw sadness apart from that of Cat Power and her peers is the haunting, gothic nature of her songs. Tender keyboard melodies and skeletal guitar rhythms are glued together in darkness.

The cold reality of The World Will Match Your Pain is unforgiving, while beneath the wounded surface of When You Find Me lies a cold viciousness. Angell's voice has shades of Patti Smith, Marianne Faithfull and Juliana Hatfield, but her attitude is one of a teenager who delights in death stares, drunken melancholia verging on pained hysteria. Words are uncomfortably drawn out, phrases repeated, and the ooh-ooh backing vocals are chilling. This is an evocative debut.