Pitchfork

Like Andrew Bird and Final Fantasy, Amanda Kapousouz can turn a stringed instrument into a full band. An Athens-based musician who also performs Celtic-tinged acoustic folk under her own name, she plays a number of instruments on Liar and the Thief, her debut as Tin Cup Prophette (which was released locally in early 2006 and is now getting a wider push), but the primary element on all her songs is the violin, which she loops and manipulates into a versatile range of sounds that coalesce into dark melodies and exotic rhythms. As it is for her male counterparts, this concept is a freeing innovation that allows Kapousouz to test the limits of her instrument and exert greater control over her music. In execution, however, Kapousouz-- who collaborated with Daniel Rickard of Parker and Lilly-- distinguishes herself from her loopy peers by eschewing both indie rock and art pop to mold her langorous strings into sharp beats and tense, decidedly urban mood music.

Kapousouz's approach works best on "Going Numb", which begins with nervous plucks that form an unsettling staccato rhythm. Then come the Mike Oldfield-style bells, still suggesting otherworldly menace even nearly 35 years after The Exorcist, followed by a bassline and strings that have been manipulated to saturate the low end. Over this carefully textured backdrop, Kapousouz sings about her body emptying itself out, her voice sounding simultaneously desperate and distant, as if inhabiting some middle plane. The instruments each fall away, only to build back up for a dramatic push on the chorus. Overall, it's the most effective showcase for Kapousouz's loops and vocals and easily the most fully realized track on the album.

Unfortunately, every other song on Liar and the Thief inhabits the same cramped, forbidding space as "Going Numb", but fails to capture the song's expertly calibrated dynamic. There are highs, of course: On the title track and "80 Days", her plucks and staccato bows coalesce into strict military beats, and elsewhere, longer notes add background dissonance, adding to the somber tension. With its low guitar and almost chirpy bells, "Poster" is a down-key song that places Kapousouz's layered vocals in an almost-live setting.

But there are also many lows. As studiously experimental as her music is, Kapousouz's songs are uniformly, almost monotonously somber, with trip-hop beats that recall Sneaker Pimps more than Portishead. Those rigorously thudding rhythms create strictly regimented tempos that rarely change within or among the songs, and as a result, she has very little opportunity to alter her vocal delivery, as if she's stuck on tortured setting. As a result, her songs hit the same pained marks over and over, eventually blurring together into a slightly amorphous whole. Too carefully textured to be demos, the songs nevertheless sound like first stabs at a promising project.