Song du Jour: "Let's Pretend We Never Have Met"

Molly Maher & Her Disbelievers, "Let's Pretend We Never Have Met" (from the forthcoming CD Balms of Gilead). All hail the new honky-tonk heroine of Minneapolis, who plays every Wednesday at Nye's, and whose band is as good a bunch of poker- and semi-twang-players as has ever graced the time-stopped stage of Lee's Liquour Lounge, which they ripped up Friday night opening for the revamped Jack Knife and the Sharps, still shit-kicking and seducing new generations of swing-dancers after all these years.

An East Side St. Paul girl who sounds as tough and sexy as that thumbnail suggests, Maher's got a lived-in voice (Balms opens, fittingly, with the lonesome-whistle sound of a departing train that seems to say, "Baby don't get too attached, I'm not long for you or this town") whose weariness is bouyed by a fierce underlying ambition and an obvious love of music and people.

All of which leads to all sorts of sticky situations in the world of bars and bards. This insta-evergreen -- every bit as memorable as its kissing kindred cousins "Strangers In The Night" or "The Night's Too Long" -- captures that moment when the whiskey and music coagulates into a full-on crush. In the end, though, the gnaw of possibility is soothed by our benevolent barmaid's suggestion, "You forget about me and darlin', I'll forget about you."

Luckily, she doesn't slam the door on her way out the bar. While playing a yearning slide guitar that sounds not unlike her permanently open heart, Maher explains herself, and sums up the bittersweet plight of anyone who has ever tried to balance the black magic of the neon night with the healing hush of the drabby day:

Yes I sound sweeter
When I've had a few
I get a little bit crabby
When it's comin' on new
It's not that I've lost
My taste for you
It's the light of day
That makes me blue