BY ANDREW LEAHEY

For The Free LANCE-STAR

Like a 1980s action-movie star, Nicole Atkins knows the power of a good one-liner.

Back in 2007, when the New Jersey native was signed to Columbia Records and touring the world in support of her debut album, she called her music "pop noir." It was a smart description, one that referenced the brighter side of her sound--the sweeping, nostalgic melodies that evoked everyone from the Ronettes to Roy Orbison. It also captured the dark string arrangements that underscored her slower songs, the ones that sound as though they were performed by an orchestra of sobbing musicians.

Atkins eventually left Columbia, signed with Razor & Tie and returned earlier this year with a new album, "Mondo Amore," whose sound she described as "psychedelic country blues." Once again, her sound bite summed everything up, hinting at both the counterculture-era rock 'n' roll and raw, boot-stomping twang that fill the album's tracks.

Now, with the "Mondo Amore" tour coming to a close, Atkins has started to write songs for a third record. She's slowly piecing the material together, drawing inspiration from the half-finished song sketches that have been filling up her phone for the past year or so. Once the album is done, she'll come with another zinger to tie the whole package together.

"It's too early to do that right now, though," she explained last week, taking a minute to field a phone call at her Brooklyn apartment.

"The new music is all over the place. I mean, I wrote a disco song the other day! After it was done, I was like, wait, who am I?"

Before the year ends, Atkins will put the songwriting on hold and launch a short solo tour. It will be an opportunity to perform her songs in an acoustic setting, stripped free of the lush, Phil Spector-like sparkle that characterized her first album and the sonic crunch that permeated her second. The tour kicks off next Tuesday at DC9.

"I've never done a solo tour," she admitted. "I'll do solo performances in my hometown or New York, but I've never really taken it on the road. I just thought it'd be fun--an easy way to breathe some new life into some of the older songs."

Like her music, Atkins' touring bands have changed over the years, ranging from a large chamber-pop ensemble to a small trio. A prominent fixture of the "Mondo Amore" tour has been guitarist Irina Yalkowsky, a pint-size player whose guitar style--atmospheric, spooky and heavy on the reverb--echoes the string arrangements of Atkins' first album.

Yalkowsky has lent some of her own songwriting contributions to the new album, too, although Atkins--who jokingly claims to have multiple personality disorder whenever she's writing--is doing just fine on her own.

"I feel like Sybil or something," she quipped. "I'm always writing in a different voice, so my records are always going to sound different from each other. Now it's just a question of what this new record will sound like."

And what the tag line will be.

Andrew Leahey is a freelance writer and musician living in Nashville.