Something old: Alina Simone's debut EP begins and ends with the Ukrainian singer's timeless voice. It's bleached and pitted like igneous rock, at times cold and remote yet tempered by the ennui of her formative years in suburban Massachusetts and the grubby glitter of New York. None of this is literal-- geography influences lyrical purview, not the innate qualities of a voice-- but since the brief intersections of divergent personal histories are of such interest to Simone, one looks to her own when attempting to understand the provenance of her tremulous coos and tortured glissandos. There's something in them that's not quite pain-- more like tension, the countervailing gravities of too many clinging roots. "When you fall in love with two people/ Choose whoever you knew first/ Because history is important," she sings tellingly, on the murky, two-toned strum of the title track.