If you notice the score above, you might be confused. EvilSponge rarely reviews something that we give this few Sponges too. Well, this is a five sponge record, but I have to take three sponges away at the end because it has a serious caveat. We'll get to that in a bit.

Mary in the Junkyard is the band of Clari Freeman-Taylor on voice and guitar with Dave Addison on drums. This is their second project together, and I have never heard their previous band, Second Thoughts. Here, they add Saya Barbaglia on bass and viola. I have no idea how this music compares to their previous act.

There are four songs. Ghost starts as a sort of folk tune, guitar and voice wavering in and out, the viola saws by and drums tap. On the choruses, female voices harmonize. It's pretty engaging.

The second track is called Marble Arch, and it starts out similarly. But on the choruses here the drums take a fast tapped beat and the song tears along, before stopping, becoming ponderous, as Freeman-Taylor pushes her voice into weird, twisted shapes, kind of like what Bjork does. Very different and interesting.

Goop has a great loping beat, Barbaglia on a rolling bass riff as Addison plays a really great drum bit. The rhythm is the star here.

The final track is called Teeth, and it builds to a nice frenzy with all the instruments going at it. The viola, in particular, seems to be working overtime to great effect.

And that's it. Four tunes, all interesting.

But.

This is my problem with the band. Freeman-Taylor sings in a weird breathy way. In a way that reminds me of a few things, specifically the vocalist in The Cranes, and also a person I met at a party several years back.

I was at a party thrown by a friend from college, and another friend showed up with this person in tow. I was introduced, and as I talked to her I noticed that she appeared to have a very bad lisp. I thought it would be rude to point it out, but it just seemed odd to me.

Later that night I was talking with another friend who I knew had overcome a bad stutter, and when the lisp girl came over to chat, my ex-stuttering friend immediately said to her, "I know a great speech pathologist. He helped me eliminate my stutter, i am sure he can help you with the lisp."

Suddenly, she looked annoyed. "What the fuck are you talking about," she said in a completely different voice.

Both of us were taken aback by the sudden change. "Your … lisp," I struggled to figure out what to say.

"I don't have a lisp you morons," she said, obviously angry with us.

"Then, why..."

She cut me off. "Look. Guys find it sexy okay. Well," she looked the two of us over with disdain visible on her face, "Not you guys!" And then she stormed off.

My friend and i were genuinely confused by this, and I avoided the faux lisper for the rest of the party. The few times I have encountered her since then, I just stay quiet and ignore her. I asked others, and the lisp is an affect that the lisper things is "attractive". The whole thing kind of freaked me out at the time.

And it kind of weirds me out even more now that I have had some distance to think about it. Do you know what kind of guys would find a girl with a lisp "sexy"? Guys who eye up young girls inappropriately. That is some borderline pedophile bullshit, and just, well, what the???

Freeman-Taylor sings in a way that reminds me of that girl at that party. It is an exaggerated "little girl voice". Is she doing this because Mary in the Junkyard wants to tap into the lucrative not-quite-a-pedophile market, or is it some natural vocal quirk of hers that people reacted to, and she is just running with it?

This is how I am also reminded of The Cranes. I love the music of The Cranes, but the singer has that "little girl voice" and in the few videos I have seen she dresses in pigtails and short dresses... Ugh. Gross. It actually turned me off from the band, despite their really cool instrumentation. It just seems … unclean.

I feel that way here. The music is so interesting. But.... "little girl voice". Ewww. Maybe it doesn't squick you out like it does me. But be warned. And I have taken off three sponges from this review because of unsettling vocals.

Otherwise, the music here is really great. Take away the vocals, or make them less affected in that way, and this would be awesome. As it is, I just can't listen to this band.