The difficulty with cabaret is its inability to leave its shadowy birthplaces without losing everything that makes it powerful. The sexual overconfidence and half-malevolent zaniness that make for a phantasmagoric night out drip from home speakers as smug nothings: nightmares are made banal and vocalists do desperate calisthenics as the audience fades. To bring this stuff into the light without letting it wither requires a sure hand and a careful spirit, and neither blend too happily with the voracious chaos of the genre; real theatricality can no more be pressed to vinyl than written pages can be stuffed through a projector. Portland outfit Sophe Lux is wise enough not to try such things and inventive enough to find the alternatives. To be sure, this is a band infatuated with burlesque: Gwynneth Haynes squeals and chirps and affects accents not her own; there's lots of talk of witches and India and Rainer Rilke's girlfriend; a song called "Marie Antoinette Robot 2073" is playfully subtitled "(A Rock Opera)" despite not quite being one. But every deliberate quirk is expertly supported by the rest of the band: while Haynes creeps her way through the first movement of "Marie Antoinette," taking her time with odd syllables, her band weaves a cradle to support the listener through the operatics to come; the perfect "Lonely Girl" rides on a stutter and a synthesizer, thickening when it must and allowing Haynes to leap atop things when it suits her. Haynes isn't a weak vocalist