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After the gut-punch of Avec’s superb debut, If I Breathe I Fall Asleep, it’s a little weird that Shawna Potter and Brooks Harlan--the band’s Medusa-haired, ax-wielding frontwoman and scientifically minded frontman--would want to record the follow-up on their own, just the two of them. Then again, the sexually charged interplay between Harlan and Potter’s voices and guitars has always been Avec’s strongest asset, and the pair’s been playing live sets under the guise of AVECduet for a while now, in addition to sporadic full-band shows.

You’d expect AVECduet’s debut to be a stripped-down version of the quartet’s usual sound, but the album finds Harlan and Potter handling drum and electronic duties in addition to guitar and vocal chores. Songs such as opener "Chase Adam" and closer "To Bet Against" pair Potter’s rich, sensual voice with vaguely flamenco guitar, and "An Archive" features the duo’s trademark dueling vocals and sounds a helluva lot like full-strength Avec. But "Good Cherub," an airy, Radiohead-esque reprise of the first verse or so of "Best of Your Letters," pales in comparison to the original. Previously recorded live favorites such as "The Piper" and "Doubled Over" are given the acoustic treatment, an intimate approach that heightens the emotion and tension of lines like "Children kiss and rot" and "I’m sore from sex that never even happened."

In fact, fully half of AVECduet’s CD consists of reworked or re-recorded Avec songs, including an unusual, electronica-inflected version of "Deceptive Cadence," one of the strongest songs in the band’s arsenal. Though it’s damn good, retaining all of the original recording’s introspective feminine vitriol, the new version feels superfluous when compared with the full-band version. Still, even pared-down Avec is one of Baltimore’s most formidable rock outfits, and fans will welcome this new incarnation.