Katherine Whalen’s latest, Dirty Little Secret, will make you do a double take as it covers a wide territory of styles, sometimes skittering between them in a matter of breaths. It is an ambitious album that takes risks with production as well as with arranging and composing which yields moments of genius as well as some where you might find your fingers seeking the skip button. In the end though Whalen, along with collaborator David Sale, create a compelling album that is worth giving a listen.

What mars the listening experience for me is the sheen of Adult Contemporary that glosses many of the tracks, in particular the Dance Pop of You-Who which feels awkward and forced as if Sale and Whalen hashed out the song’s concept in a committee with the express purpose of targeting the mothers of tweens. Whalen’s voice really isn’t suited to confection, rather it works best on songs where she can settle into a warm smokiness. Conversely, she shines on the breathy number Angel which is steep deeply in nostalgia for 80’s style Pop.

Where Whalen truly shines is when she is working over Jazz styled Rhythm & Blues numbers like the opener, “The Funnest Game” and “Want You Back”, and this is where the arrangements feel looser and the one-man ensemble of Sale sounds frisky even with the drum programming that drives the track. These numbers are a nice balance to the more ambitious attempts on the album and are definitely a reward when taking the work as a whole. Dirty Little Secrets, in the end is a really good album, and it will be interesting to see what direction she’ll take in the future.