I wasn’t thinking of you at all. There’s an artist I was going to recommend, Happy Rhodes (ironic name), who has TONS of “quiet, sad, angsty” songs, beautiful stuff. I have mp3s and she doesn’t mind me sharing them. So I was going to post lyric snippets and links so the OP could hear them, but I thought I’d better ask first.
Oh, ok, I see now, my mistake. blush My apologies.
I saw this thread and came in just to suggest The Trinity Sessions. Given the umpteen previous recommendations for the same, if the OP doesn’t rush off and buy it at the earliest opportunity this whole thread will have been in vain.
ah, Happy Rhoads. There are worse things to be than a Kate Bush clone. She never really did much for me though, I prefer the real Bush. No offence intended
The few mentions of Lou Reed reminded me of his saddest disc that I’m aware of “Magic and Loss”, and the title track really sums it all up and would seem to fit the bill. Brilliantly poignant.
Some of Tonic’s cd “Lemon Parade” is mellow angst
Downbound Train and My Hometown by Springsteen off Born in the USA are quiet and low, Downbound Train gets me every time.
Doing the best that I can by Stevie Nicks, very good, the lyrics are amazing…
“…I just played the part
I didn’t win or lose
Maybe next time I’ll think about how I’m feeling…”
“In my distress, well I wanted someone to blame me
In my devastation I wanted so to change
In my way disaster was the only thing that I could depend on…”
“Nobody home” by Pink Floyd, from the Wall. I believe most of that cd would qualify here.
No offence taken. Kate’s my musical Goddess. I’ve been a fan since 1980 and she literally changed my life (I met my husband through the fandom, and we’ve been together 20 years). No really, we’re the kind of fans who flew to London for fan conventions in hopes that she’d be there (she was, both times), and met her plane at JFK when she came to the US to promote Hounds of Love, just to get an autograph. Instead of art we have Kate posters up. See, nutso. But nice, not scary. 
I became a Happy Rhodes fan through a Kate fan who sent me a tape, and I was instantly smitten. That was 15 years ago and I’m still smitten. She does have a high voice like Kate, partially because she learned to sing by singing along to The Kick Inside. She’ll gladly admit the strong influence that Kate has had on her, but she is very much her own artist. I don’t know what or how much you’ve heard, but she does have 10 albums, and none of them sound like any of Kate’s albums. It’s only her high voice, and the fact that they’re both strong intelligent women who are extremely talented. Happy’s songs are much more personal and not cinematic like Kate’s. She’s not folky at all though. She really doesn’t fit into any established genre. I guess that’s another thing she has in common with Kate. And a 4-octave range, though Happy’s low voice sounds more like low Annie Lennox or Joan Armatrading. Well, no, not really, she gets a lot lower than they do.
I’m just amazed that anyone else has heard of her. 
She’s so Indie the I melts off. She has a day job! She makes enough money to make an album, then she’ll sell enough (hopefully) to pay the bills and then works to make another one. Her last album was in 1998, and she’s struggling to find the bucks to finish her 11th.
So yeah, I have lots of mp3s and I’m always willing to share (she knows I do this, I used to play her on a radio show I had so she knows me from back then) but I didn’t know if it was kosher to bring up mp3s in this thread or the “Playlist” thread. A name on a page means nothing. A voice in your ear does. I always figured, why bring her up if people can’t hear her?
Add me to the chorus of DarkPrince, Tuckerfan, and Ogre with Nine Inch Nails. Hurt (any version of it, there’s about 5 different versions that I know of, including Johnny Cash’s) is great. Additionally, I’d like to recommend the Still disc, aka the second disc from their ‘And All That Could Have Been’ live album. Just take a look at the song titles:
Something I can Never Have
Adrift and at Peace
The Fragile
The Becoming
Gone, Still
The Day the World Went Away
And All That Could Have Been
There Persistance of Loss
Leaving Hope
Almost makes you depressed just reading the track list…
The Wheel by Rosanne Cash. Don’t let her name and heritage
fool you. Its not a “country” CD…I’m not sure what to label
it. But the songs are definitely heartfelt. I would definitely take
this CD if I was stuck on a deserted island
A few of my personal faves -
Song to the Siren by This Mortal Coil
No Come Down by The Verve
There’s a Light that Never Goes Out by The Divine Comedy
Pearl Jam’s - I am Mine