Sweet and Vicious is the first EP from Allison’s Invention aka Allison Tartalia.  On it you’ll find her playing a variety of instruments and really doing a great job.

Use the above Amazon widget to listen to samples of each track and if you’re so inclined, to easily buy one or all of them.  Now let’s go track by track.

Clean sets a good tone for the rest of the EP with some dark instrumental parts below Allison’s wonderful lyrics.  It’s a song about getting a fresh start, and this EP itself is a fresh start so it’s a good start.

Sweet and Vicious is the title track and starts with a simple piano and vocals.  “How can I resist something so sweet & vicious/something as dangerously delicious as you my sweet” The bass picks slowly and some light drums come in.  The lyrics are delectable and the song maintains a nice bluesy jazz vibe about it.  It’s a great track.

Ran has a nice interesting beat about it and mixes things up.  It reminded me a little of Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine, while being totally different.  It’s a very interesting track that I liked a lot.  Especially put back to back with Sweet and Vicious.

Pangea starts off very sparsely and is a really great track that sets a very specific atmosphere.  It’s got some fire in the vocals that’s incredible.

New Low is a song about cheating. It’s a little too typical singer/songwriter-y for my tastes, but it’s still a decent and well produced song.

Just A Body closes out the album with a song that uses some nice harmonies and background vocals.  This song highly reminds me of some of the work of Charlotte Martin, most specifically her cover of Constant Craving.  It’s a very different track than the rest of the album, yet stands out very nicely.

Overall this album is pretty great.  I’d recommend downloading a copy right now.  It’s available through the links below.