Poe is an American singer-songwriter who blends various genres, but I'm listing her under "alternative" partly because that just seems the most convenient place to put her. And her work certainly seems alternative to me, though a lot of that may just be because her career began in the '90s.

tek's rating: ½

Hello
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This is Poe's debut album, released in 1995. At least some of the songs have lyrics in the liner notes.

1. "Hello": This is the second single off the album. It's a fairly cool trip-hop song. My favorite part is probably the "la da da da da da" refrain, which I find kind of spooky, in a good way.

2. "Trigger Happy Jack (Drive By a Go-Go)": This is the third single, and probably the song I remember best from the album. "Can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being" is my favorite part, but the whole song is cool. The story the song tells is, uh, complicated.

3. "Choking the Cherry": I'm not sure how I feel about this.

4. "That Day": This song's sound is surprisingly chill, compared to other songs on the album, at least for the first minute or so (the whole song is under 3 minutes). But it's still far from happy.

5. "Angry Johnny": This is the first single, and another song I remember really well. I'm... not quite sure what it's about, but it's kinda weird, and I like it.

6. "Dolphin": This is kinda trippy. I like it, even if I don't entirely get it. But hey, I like dolphins, so...

7. "Another World": This is jazzy, but also hip-hop and... other things. It might be the first song on the album that is really upbeat, in both sound and lyrics. I like it.

8. "Fingertips": This one is jazzy and sensual. It contains a sample from Brazilian artist Sérgio Mendes.

9. "Beautiful Girl": This is a lighter song than most on the album, but I can't quite tell what the mood actually is. Maybe it's a mix of happy and sad. Or not. Whatever, it's nice.

10. "Junkie": Jazzy and trippy. It doesn't seem to actually be about using drugs, as the title might suggest, but listening to it still kind of feels like doing some kind of drug, I think.

11. "Fly Away": This feels kind of sad, but it's pretty. Perhaps the prettiest song on the album. The end has some silence for a little bit before Poe shows up again to say goodbye.

Well, the whole album feels rather poetic to me, but it has a varied range of poetic styles and moods. A lot of the songs are angry, and I'm not sure any of them are entirely happy. I only find two of the songs memorable, and they're like the angriest songs on the album. The whole thing is fairly good, I think, and those two songs are kind of great (so I would rate them higher than I rate the album as a whole).