Through her band Sarge, Elizabeth Elmore's songs created one of the most authentic female personas in the last decade of music. Tough, gracious, sensuous, serious and always forthright, the woman portrayed by the lyrics was as sharply drawn as a character in a Lorrie Moore novel, yet without Moore's tendency to soften the harsher moments with humor.

The final Sarge release, Distant, has wisely been divided into four sections. The three last studio demos that feature the full band lineup (Chad Romanski, Sue Roth, Derek Niedringhaus, and Elizabeth) could all fit nicely amongst other classic Sarge songs. Each of them, but especially "Detroit Star-Lite" and "Clearer", carries the same swift rush of emotion as is found on "Beguiling" from their classic Glass Intact album. The lyrics give a very clear impression that July 1999 was a bad relationship month!

The live tracks, added partly to boost the size of the album, come from their dates opening for Braid, a band which shared a similar love of and devotion to emotional music. The audience noise is kept to a minimum, making the songs serve mostly as a rough sampler for all whose music libraries lack Sarge's first two offerings. All the live songs are wonderful versions, I should add, but especially "Half As Far", which builds to a weightier conclusion through its rawer performance.

A highlight for many will be the covers. Wham's "Last Days of Christmas", chosen for possibly frivolous reasons, still proves the perfect song for Sarge to redo. They inject it with the energy and soul George Michael always shied from and make it my second favorite 80's cover (next to Class' "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off"). For Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time", Sarge adds surging guitars to the arrangement, but not exactly to the song's benefit. While wonderful in its own right, it's surprisingly less emotional than Cyndi's original version. "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'", in contrast, is more emotional than Nancy Sinatra's version, and quite a winner.

The best news for Sarge fans is that the final songs -- a short, stark title track and a stunning acoustic rendering of "The End of July", now retitled "All My Plans Changed..." -- are powerful indications that the peaks have not all been reached, either for Elizabeth or for the other members of Sarge.