Unlike Space Team Electra, Lady Lazarus hails not from Colorado, but rather from Georgia by way of San Jose. However, Lady Lazarus’s erudite allusions and engaging but restrained sound will certainly find some fans among Space Team Electra’s audience.Lady Lazarus is the performing name of Melissa Ann Sweat. It’s also the name of a famous poem by Sylvia Plath, which first appeared in her posthumous 1965 collection Ariel. It’s a poem about being brought to the brink of death, and then rising back up, just as the biblical character does. In Lady Lazarus the musician’s first full-length album, Mantic, listeners may detect similar lyrical themes. In one standout track, “Sick Child,” Sweat sings, “I was a sick child, and now I’m well.” Watching the video for the song (which premiered on Stereogum on January 12, 2011), though, grand and overwrought resurrection imagery is ignoredinstead, water flows gently into a small aquarium, preparing to once again be filled with darting, fleeting life.Striking out your own artistic niche can be a difficult thing to do on your own, and reviewers have inevitably drawn comparisons when describing the album. Lady Lazarus has been compared to a similar one-woman act, Liz Harris aka Grouper from Portland, Oregon. Others have detected the improvisational influence of Finnish artists like Lau Nau (Laura Naukkarinen of Helsinki) and Islaja (Merja Kokkonen, also of Helsinki). However, Lady Lazarus has the voice and the emotional power to recommend checking out her album, whether or not you’ve heard those other groups before.Currently the only artist releasing on the Apartment Life label, Lady Lazarus’s first album Mantic is a treat whether listening to random tracks or from beginning to end. Song titles like “Via Elysian Fields: Lake Pontchartrain,” “Midnight Music for a Broken Heart Condition,” and “Kurosawa’s Dreams and Me” show the same literary flair as the best of Space Team Electra (“Ouroborous Omphalos,” “Dissolution of the Order of the Star”). Lady Lazarus may have a different sound than the grandiose rock of STE, but the Melissa Ann Sweat’s spirit and passion makes her a fitting recommendation for Myshal Prasad and crew’s many fans.