Review: Lera Lynn at World Cafe Live

There's been little good to come from Season Two of HBO's moody True Detective series. No one is shouting for Vince Vaughn or Colin Farrell to do another angular drama. The premium cable giant may not even want show creator Nic Pizzolatto to write a third season. But one quiet sensation of the second season - even in shadow - was sultry, smoky singer-songwriter Lera Lynn. In the gloom of the dusty California taproom where Vaughn and Farrell met, Lynn blowsily intoned her atmospheric folksy tunes. With their ruined-romance lyrics, troubled timing, and down-tuned melodies, they lent the staged room's stale air a gentle breeze while adding just a bit more mystery to the bleak cop-and-robber story's formless plot.

On Sunday, Lynn visited Philly's World Cafe Live without Vaughn's smug clichés or Farrell's mustache to interrupt her flow. It wasn't easy turning the clean cafe into a grungy roadhouse saloon, but her dreary tremolo tones (and those of her loosey-goosey backing trio) lent the room the right wrong ambience.

Lynn's shushy voice had an unsettling serenity, especially when mumbling "I wish I may, I wish I might" during her opening lullaby, "Out to Sea." There, the quartet poured itself into the song's click-and-whirr vibe as though ladling honey into vinegar for bittersweet effect, with Lynn's voice adding just the right touch of white pepper. The sly "You Know What You've Done" was pensively crepuscular, with an off-the-beat rhythm, a James Bond/John Barry-esque bridge, and a sad shimmer recalling Lynn's predecessors in slowcore (Julee Cruise, Lana Del Rey) without aping. The wet echo applied to Lynn's voice during "My Least Favorite Life" - a favorite from True Detective - gave the words "A kiss holds a million deceits / and a lifetime goes up in smoke" forlorn sizzle, a sloe gin fizziness that makes the song's spare etherealism all the more woozily morose.

All that woe, and Lynn & Co. still were fun, funny, a stitch even. Drinking wine and feeling fine, their take on Springsteen's "Fire" crept, but with a sexy wiggle. They performed Zombie songs a cappella, made jokes at one another's expense, and pushed the discordant country lilt of "Whiskey" to its maximum drunky best, Lynn gracing its hooks with a baby-doll-baritone worth the price of admission.