Looking forward to the new year in releases, it looks like former Velocity Girl singer Sarah Shannon isn’t done with us yet. Her self-titled solo debut, a drastic chamber-pop departure from her Velocity Girl work, looked very much like a one-off project after Shannon basically dropped off the face of the planet after 2002. The pattern isn’t exactly uncommon, after all—a lot of band leaders, ready to spread their wings as solo artists, make a huge effort to distance themselves from their previous, more famous work. Sometimes the result is a major failure (cf. Travis Morrison of the Dismemberment Plan). More often the tactic works all too well, leaving the solo artist to languish in willful obscurity until they eventually give up.

Luckily, Sarah Shannon falls into neither category. It turns out her time away from the music world was well spent in the land of domesticity. Now that she’s got a young family established, Shannon has returned for a second go-around. If the title track to her next album is any indication, we can expect material very similar to her 2002 debut, which means lots of AM-radio horn flourishes and breezily effervescent throwback pop songs. Not a bad way to begin 2007, really.

City Morning Song should be out some time next month, but you can preview the whole album on the Flash-smeared Minty Fresh site, under the Bazaar section. Try to pay no mind to the unfortunate cover art.