"There's a couple songs," she says, "that I think definitely tie together the stuff I've been trying to do for years, which is to create a sonic bed and then put the song into that bed." But don't expect O'Neil's "sonic meanderings" -- a simultaneously inviting yet remote amalgamation, as if Linda Thompson were singing over an ambient Pink Floyd mix -- to raise their head on her upcoming jaunt east.
"This time I'm interested in trying to present just songs and see how that works," says O'Neil. "I've come to realize that things that happen in the studio and things that happen on the stage are very different. And I've embraced that over the years and tried to enjoy that as an opportunity for one song to have several different lives."