Lowe keeps the music smart.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

Like the rest of us, Vanessa Lowe has a left brain and a right brain. The left side enabled her to get through Brandeis University and the University of Denver, escaping with a doctorate in clinical psychology.

But through all that schooling, she also kept her right brain in shape by writing and singing songs. And now she definitely favors a right-brain approach to "explaining the mysteries of life and human behavior," as her autobiography puts it.

Psychology offered a framework through which to view human behavior, she says, "but psychology can be sort of rigid, and there are other ways that feel more magical and mystical, less categorical. I'm allowing myself to use my intuition."

For a long time, Lowe poked around in the mysteries as an acoustic singer-songwriter. But the third time out she has definitely plugged in, and her fine new album, `57 Suspect Words," more clearly reveals some quirky cerebral circuitry.

Lowe cheerfully admits that some of her songs are "a little obtuse," but she's not apologizing.

"I appreciate Lucinda Williams and others who are more direct," she said in a telephone interview last week, "but I also like to hear other people's interpretations of my songs. They're often different than mine, but they're just as valid, just as real."

Lowe says she follows her stream-of-consciousness wherever it carries her, and frequently figures out the meaning midway through the process of putting words and music together.

Even though she started out primarily as an acoustic performer, sometimes solo and sometimes with violin and percussion, she says, "The music I like and listen to always has a lot going on."

Citing Soul Coughing and Solex (Elisabeth Esselink) as influences, she says "I've always liked weird, chopped-up sound." And now she has her own, thanks to her collaboration with Kent Sparling, an experimental composer and sound-tinkerer who produced her two acoustic albums, "House of Sin" and "Barnacles of Joy."

Sparling brought a lot of his ideas into her musical life, she says, and so did electric bassist Ben Freelove.

"I had to develop my confidence before I could do this," she says. "I lucked into working with people who are really creative and enjoy collaboration.

`I'm now much more comfortable letting other people bring in their own ideas. I'm just lucky."

Magic in collaboration

Their collaboration has borne good fruit in `57 Suspect Words," which deftly uses all sorts of electric and electronic devices along with uncommon instruments such as the melodica, theremin, ukelele, lap steel guitar and djembe. The sounds make each song feel right, both aurally and rhythmically.

Lowe also adjusts her low, supple voice and style and phrasing to fit each song. On some tracks, you can almost see a sly grin or quick wink as she sings.

This is exactly what it's billed as: "intelligent pop." These catchy, engaging songs will dance you wistfully, whimsically and thoughtfully into what Lowe's publicity describes as "odd and unlikely perspec- tives."

If "Darwinian Darts" makes you uneasy with its instruction to, "Stand very straight, hold very still/ The aim is to maim, not to kill," you'll find the antidote in "Your Worried Mind," which urges you to, "Open desire like a web and be a net/ Here comes a windfall of devices/ to quiet your worried mind."

Or you might prefer some calming Zen counsel about nonattachment, to be found in "Thin Window."

If you've been in love, or felt love sneaking up on you, or have been in sometimes rocky relationship, burn yourself a CD with these four tracks: "Sandy Water," "Steady in the Draft," "Carry Me Home" and "Love on Your Arm."

If you enjoy being mildly baffled (although not toyed with), try the fascinating thought fragments of "Sounds Like" or the you-can-almost-touch-it imagery of "Growing a Word," "Whistling" or "The Tells."

The album was recorded at Guerilla Studios in Oakland, Calif. It was mixed at Skywalker Sound in Marin County by Kent Sparling, who has worked as a sound designer and re-recording mixer for such films as "Lost in Translation" and "Adaptation."

Sparling is one half of Lowe's band, Bug Eyed Sprite. He will be with her for her Cafe Paradiso show tonight, but bassist Freelove is staying home in California to earn money for a plane he's buying.

Based in Berkeley, Calif., the group is on an up-north mini-tour that also includes gigs at the Bitter End in Portland, AJ's in Corvallis and the Humboldt Brewery in Arcata, Calif.

The group used to be called Vanessa Lowe and the Lowlifes, but none of the members liked that name. Lowe says they were riding in a car one day, "riffing on different names," when someone came up with Bug Eyed Sprite, a once-popular type of Austin Healey sports car.

The name stuck. To her, the name conjures up "a hypothyroid fairy."

Playing the name game

Lowe obviously has a fondness for unusual names. She records for an independent label called the Jicama Salad Company, and once even sold an album online to a woman who was browsing the Web for recipes.

And Bug Eyed Sprite is three quarters of the way through a new album that will be titled "e.e.p." And that means?

Lowe says it could be an acronym for "exit entry point," but she prefers to think of it as a sound that might be made "by a bug hanging from the wing of an airplane."

`57 Suspect Words," she says, "feels like I went around my backyard digging little holes and then sticking my head in there for a while. There are songs about trying to experience silence, being scared of the life of words, hearing messages in the songs of night frogs.

`The next record is going to be all from the air. This one was fun, but the holes fill with rain, and then you have to look up or you drown."

Paul Denison can be reached at 338-2323 or pdenison@ guardnet.com.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Vanessa Lowe

With some but not all of her group, Bug Eyed Sprite; Tony Kaltenberg opens

When: 9 p.m. today

Where: Cafe Paradiso, 115 W. Broadway

How much: $5 to $7