Texan native Shea Seger's debut effort is a sultry southern cocktail of bass and blues, unraveling at the edges and leaking stuffing. This rag doll with a recording contract flirts with the decidedly creepy side of southern living, her voice a wide-eyed, childlike lisp that intones on the album's solid opener, "Last Time:" "Bits and pieces of the night before/Candle wax lying on the floor/Scraps of paper you're not meant to find/Broken clocks still telling time." The album is beautifully produced, equally encompassing folk twang, beat factory, and twisted soul. Unfortunately, the majority of the thirteen tunes are hardly worth mentioning. The few that are good are quite good indeed; "Blind Situation" is a smoldering account of a lover's indecision, and "I Love You Too Much" earns kudos as the album's prettiest hook, despite some seriously drippy lyrics. Songs like "Walk on Rainbows" and "Shatterwall" take themselves far too seriously; consequently, Seger's delivery comes off as annoying instead of bizarrely intriguing. Yet the final track, "May Street," stands alone as a terrifically funky stroll through Seger's past in small-town Southern America, warping her voice from lilting twenty-something to that of a little girl with a helium addiction. If she had consistently capitalized on the creep factor without slipping into syrupy melodram, The May Street Project would have been worth your hard-earned pesos. As is, snatch a few tracks from Napster while you still can.