Well, this is a curio. There's not much background information on Hazel Winter - she was formerly guitarist in cult Bristol band the Blue Aeroplanes, albeit a couple of years after their tilt at the big time, and Situation Normal Then, her third solo album, was produced in part by Portishead's Adrian Utley. She's been compared to Kristin Hersh and PJ Harvey, which I can see yet it's not as straightforward as that. There's something very English folkie about it - opening track 'Midwich Sleep On', a literary minded dark village life tale, sounds like a softer singing Kathryn Williams with Polly Harvey on guitar set on a low fuzz setting while the Incredible String Band play across the studio, all flutes and general woodwind. Then you realise the bassier wind sound throughout is a didgeridoo, before a banjo turns up towards the end.There's no doubt Winter is an accomplished guitarist, both in folky fingerpicking and when something more visceral - the bluesy shuffle of 'Don't Send Me Back To The Dark Place' turns gradually into delicate ululations over a raw rhythm guitar - and her lyrical concerns are wrapped in enough layers of unsettling storytelling intrigue, with numerous references to mysterious appearances of blood, to retain closer listening interest, couched in the sort of faux-naive girly voice that will turn people off on first contact but makes the overriding themes of bleakness, loss and impending mental catastrophe pitched against the world dig further into the conscious. Yet at the same time a resolution into something properly outstanding remains frustratingly out of reach, restrained by the having to tread the line between tale teller and folky nightmare, ending up almost too mannered for purpose. There are several occasions when she never really lets howlingly go in the way her urgent strumming and snatches of real darkness threaten as on 'Turn The Main Siren On' and 'The Candyman Walks' and especially on 'Wolf', where Winter is driven to clenched teeth panic against Wicker Man woodwind and at one point what distantly sounds like a demonic squeezebox, and a few times you can certainly hear her baring her teeth and stepping up a gear but ultimately choosing not to leap into the emotionally stripped bare abyss.As things progress I can't help feeling that Utley could have suggested more of the take on the broken, haunted sea shanty folk exhibited on his own band's Third; Winter similarly seems to require salvation but should be at the end of her tether instead of sounding relatively comfortable with the concept. And calling a track 'Music To Self-Harm To' sounds like trying too hard, even if it does attempt the unlikely feat of marrying Steve Albini-era Harvey, Captain Beefheart and Northumbrian trad folk in under two minutes. Situation Normal Then isn't a bad album by any means, but it's one which could for all its spooked, somewhat damaged overview could have been carried through better. 61%Hazel Winter on Myspace