Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Listening to Natalie Walker’s debut solo album, Urban Angel, is a bit like swimming underwater at midnight, floating through a liquid blue pool all tuned up on Prozac. As she sings to a low-humming techno-synth in her opening cut, Crush: “Sweet like a warm summer rain / I cannot deny / crush the innocence inside me / release what’s inside.”

Her vocals are light, haunting, ripe with autumn colors of teen angst, “All alone in comfort / it’s my solitude I will embrace” (Quicksand). The music is moody, almost funereal at times, but no less intoxicating for all that. The title track envelops the listener in a luscious, circular rhythm, like dancing a waltz with a child on your feet, “She pulls us in / and wraps us in her chill.”

Born and raised in Indiana in what she describes as a “Born Again Christian family,” Walker grew up listening to country and religious music. Though it was a positive experience for her, she says on her webpage, she split home when she was about 20, when she says she was still musically a “blank slate.”

“I remember the first time I heard Portishead,” she says. “I freaked out. I fell in love with Beth Gibbons’ voice. It was strange and different. That was sort of the beginning of the down-tempo, trip-hop vibe for me.”

Walker co-wrote the album with the help of Stuhr, the two-man production team made up of Dan Chen and Nate Greenberg, who also provide synth and programming on the album. Their low-key electro groove comes through particularly well on tracks like No One Else, which brims with a sensual, floating airiness, on the brink of desire, stepping over the edge . . ., “I’m at the point of no restraint / Let’s just make a move and feel the earth quake.” Faith plays like the little drummer girl in bled-out colors, while Not the End resonates with lyrics of hope offset with music fit for a Tim Burton dream montage.

A couple of cuts don’t come off as well. Rest Easy is a weak drum-machined tune where Walker’s falsetto wears thin. Circles traps us in a monotonous circus rhythm as depressing as inhospitable clowns. Despite the bumps, though, there’s some delicious depth and beauty in this album. It’s well worth checking out.