Flutterby, the debut from Australian singer-songwriter Butterfly Boucher, was one of my favorite albums of 2004. (For a refresher, see here and here). Flutterby enjoyed a long residency on my iPod, and would likely still be on it today had the hard drive not decided to wipe itself clean a couple of weeks ago.

Still, it’s taken the Nashville-based Boucher nearly five years to issue the follow-up, Scary Fragile, released last Tuesday (coincidentally her 30th birthday). If things had worked out as Boucher had originally planned, however, Scary Fragile, might possibly have been one of my favorite albums of 2006.

See, Boucher’s sophomore set has been sitting on the shelf for several years. After recording Scary Fragile with producer David Kahne, Boucher’s record label, Geffen, wasn’t sure how to market it, so execs decided to let UK affliate Polydor to release it overseas first. But Polydor felt it was too “American-sounding,” and had Boucher re-record it with a Swedish producer. Then just as Polydor was readying the album’s release, Geffen stepped in and said the UK label would have to buy Boucher’s contract out first. Polydor balked.

After a year of negotiations, Geffen dropped Boucher but allowed her to depart with both versions of Scary Fragile in hand. With her record-label wounds all too fresh (the latest in a series, really), Boucher decided to release the album herself (the original Kahne-produced version, that is). “I haven’t done anything for four years,” she says. “It’s going to be interesting to see who’s remembering that I’m still alive and who is going to buy it.”

I’d occasionally searched for updates about Boucher, but it was only a chance glance at an Amazon MP3 email that brought her new release to my attention. But I’ve got high hopes that she’s gonna be just fine. Boucher placed several songs from Flutterby on TV shows, and even one track from Scary Fragile, “A Bitter Song,” debuted back in February 2007 in a big way, featured twice on Grey’s Anatomy. And yet Geffen didn’t know how to sell her album.

Boucher says she’s “always loved soundtracks and instrumentals,” so perhaps it’s not surprising that much of Scary Fragile seems well-suited for scoring characters’ highs and lows. With hooks aplenty and a few Beatlesque melodies in her bag of musical tricks, tube time this time around would very likely turn new fans onto her album.

First single, “Gun For A Tongue,” was finished with another producer, Brian Malouf. Boucher had initially brought the lyric “Watch out for this girl, she has a gun for a tongue” and a James Bond-ish lick to Kahne, but the two had differing ideas about bringing the song to life. The menacing melody of the verses reminds me a little of Lykke Li’s “I’m Good I’m Gone,” though Boucher’s recording predates it; perhaps she still picked up some tricks from her Swedish studio time? But then the chorus kicks in, so squarely rooted in Boucher’s soaring-pop sweet spot (a la “Another White Dash”), and I’m reminded why I fell for her the first time around.

Purchase Butterfly Boucher – “Gun For A Tongue” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.