Creature Comforts, the second album from maverick cello songstress Meaghan Burke, is a polystylistic, tragicomic musical funhouse, where deranged Tom Waits-ish waltzes devolve into Mozartian string quartet passages, where contrabass clarinet drones explode into honkytonk guitars (with just a hint of sousaphone). Her songs flirt with elements of grunge, contemporary classical music, free jazz, folk, and cabaret. Time and time again, a song promises to be a sweet, crooning pop tune – but each time, something emerges from the depths to unsettle, distort, disrupt – and we find ourselves in a room crammed with old love letters and strange creaturely objects, where Gustav Mahler listens to grunge and Jacqueline DuPre shreds free jazz. The album was recorded in NYC and Vienna, with a cast of Burke's closest musical collaborators from both cities, including the New York-based contemporary string quartet The Rhythm Method, clarinet extremist Carlos Cordeiro, double bassist/sound artist Bernd Klug, Dobro virtuoso Zeke Healy,, the impossibly deep-voiced Werner Kitzmüller, antifolk icon Simon Usaty, esteemed multi-instrumentalist David Schweighart, sousaphonist Andreas Humpel, and freejazz/hardcoredrummer Didi Kern.