Long before self-reflective female singers became the hip trend on the alternative music scene, Beth Brown of Rochester, New York's Absolute Grey was writing and singing about loneliness and the challenge of independence. What Brown lacked in vocal range, she more than made up for in guts and naked emotion. Green House (six studio tracks and a pair of live numbers, including a cover of the Velvet Underground's "Beginning to See the Light") defines the quartet's garage-pop approach, the bass carrying most of the melodies and the guitar adding color with Peter Buck-like arpeggios.

The denser, darker What Remains, produced by Tim Lee of the Windbreakers, is a humble masterpiece in which Brown alternately deplores her weakness and musters up strength in the face of a failing relationship. The performances are crude, and drummer Pat Thomas sometimes sounds as though he's being piped in from a different state, but neither can suffocate the album's intrinsic dignity.

Absolute Grey pared down to a two-piece for most of the Painted Post EP; the four songs on which Brown is accompanied only by Mitch Rasor on bass and acoustic guitar are frighteningly beautiful. Without the competition of a full rhythm section, her voice can be softer and more expressive, and her lyrics articulate pain without ever stooping to self-pity. "Closer Apart," "Sylvia" and "Abandon Waltz" are touching little adventures into her soul.

A Journey Thru the Past is a live album (recorded in Rochester in 1984) containing all previously unreleased material. In the summer of '87, all four original members reformed briefly and cut another studio record, Sand Down the Moon. Thomas' first solo album (he's made several others since, remaining active in the '90s) finds the drummer instead singing and playing acoustic guitar.