"The songs of Washington, D.C.-based singer-guitarist Alice Despard are like New York City rock 'n' roll played on an old Harmony acoustic guitar -- like Patti Smith interpreting the work of Neil Young. Despard fuses her intuitive, poetic observations with a warm mysticism, producing sparse, intellectually muscular songs that resemble nothing so much as four-minute pop hymns. Blending the stark realism of the Velvet Underground with the oblique optimism of early R.