It's rare to find an "ethnic" music-influenced album that's not about finding a groove with nifty exotic instruments and staying there, to the detriment of actual songwriting or musicianship. Basya Schechter and her cohorts in Pharaoh's Daughter neatly sidestep this pitfall; Schechter blends traditional Jewish folk music with Middle Eastern instruments, electric guitars, a string quintet and a decidedly modern and very smart writing style. She creates a sound that's both gorgeously foreign and familiar, though certainly not common, that sticks its tongue out at any who dares to try to categorize it.

Exile is a dark, textured album, musically speaking, but it's not as angsty as its title suggests -- it seems to be more about a sort of self-imposed internal separation than literal external isolation. Schechter's lyrics never take themselves too seriously; her slightly off-kilter narratives are liberally peppered with witty phrase-turns. The words are sometimes religious in theme, but never pious -- hell, "Paradise Hung", the most obviously Old Testament-themed piece of the bunch, is also the most irreverent. Actually, "irreverent" might be a misleading term; it may wink and nudge and put the story into more relevant terms, but it leaves the original spirit intact.

Overall, however, the mood comes less from the lyrics, as rewarding as they are, and more from Schechter's sultry voice and the band's intricate backing -- based on the guitar-bass-drums setup, but expanded with bubbling electronics, strings, and a host of bowed and plucked and beaten instruments with unpronounceable names. At times, the sheer amount of sound coming from the speakers can be awe-inspiring in its own right, though it never overwhelms the sweet melodies at the heart of Exile's songs. Basya Schechter may refer to herself on one track as "a hyperconscious Jewish fake with a Catholic habit for confession", but that's hardly an accurate representation of her ability to express her potential insecurities with grace, intelligence and dense, orchestrated loveliness. Despite its subject matter and musical origins, Exile is most successful when its viewpoint is most unorthodox.