On Clever Combination, the Proud Marys are concerned about communication. In song after song, singer/primary songwriter Whitney Ann McCray is anxious about whether or not she can make herself understood, and voices and what people say are recurring motifs throughout the album. As a gay woman in a Howard Stern world, that anxiety is interesting and understandable; can a lesbian make people understand the realities of lives like hers when the common images are so lurid and wrong?

That’s just the subtext though. The songs on Clever Combination aren’t overtly political or even necessarily gynocentric. The band is all women, but the songs are reflections on daily life. They’re a little earnest, and McCray isn’t afraid to see how many syllables she can jam into a line sometimes, but generally the album is attractive folk made distinct by the effective harmonies and Portia Pollock’s percussion, which gives the songs a motor too few folk songs have. On a song like “Candy Apple Red,” the pieces all come together with a memorable chorus, a sweet melody and a performance that moves with a lilt while telling the story of an illegal immigrant in prison for robbing a Circle K.

Ironically, the richest moment on the disc is a cover of the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post.” Recast in a woman’s voice, the song sounds more real—who believes a voice as strong as Gregg Allman’s was tortured so?—and hearing the lead guitar sound startlingly familiar played on an acoustic suggests that there may be a lot more blues in folk than we often hear because we associate blues more with sound than with notes.