Anya Singleton, The Other Side

Anya Singleton's first full-length album goes a long way towards fulfilling the promise of her earlier EP, Not Easy To Forget. The jazzy sound of that disc has evolved here into a more up-front soul sound with a bigger beat, epitomized by the insistent opening track, "Don't Tell Me." When I first played on the song it brought to mind the shock to the system I felt when I first heard Dana Glover's "Rain."

The slinky but unsentimental R&B thrum of "Small Disasters" and the airy "Simple" further show the subtle songwriting skills of Singleton and her two co-writers. In "Stop This Train," perhaps the best ballad on the disc, Singleton's phrasing resembles Bonnie Raitt's. By contrast, "Replaceable" is energetically pissed-off and punked-up, while "Nevermore" further establishes Singleton's strong persona: "No more lovin', rich boy, no, nevermore."

In the ruminative "Sandcastles" Singleton modulates her strong, rich voice down a notch, making me wish she'd actually take a few more chances with the fine vocal instrument she's been blessed with; there's a certain sameness to the quality of her vocals through much of the disc. When she opens up her belt in the anthemic closer, "The Other Side," one cheers her on and wants more.

But it's already clear that the indie route has given Singleton's talent some needed time to flower. I hate seeing undeveloped artists like Alicia Keys sprint to superstardom, never getting a chance to develop the way they might have, while taking up space in the public consciousness that more deserving artists ought to have.

Singleton could be one of those more deserving ones. I caught her live recently, singing a few songs with only Ann Klein on guitar backing her up. When she broke out "Don't Tell Me," the audience, which had come to see other performers, snapped right to attention.

Emory Joseph, Fennario: Songs by Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter

Emory Joseph wants to spread the word of the greatness of the Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter songwriting ouevre. It's a worthwhile effort. A gifted singer, Joseph assembled a collection of top musicians and recorded a dozen Garcia-Hunter tunes in five days in a New York City studio. The result should warm the hearts of Grateful Dead fans. Whether Dead-haters will give it a chance is, of course, another question.

"I think these two were as good a songwriting team as America has ever known," writes Joseph in the liner notes, "and have always wanted to share them with the non-Grateful Dead fans, who don't know what they're missing. The songs they wrote have beautiful melodies and words that fit in your life when you're 15, and yet still and again when you are 60." I've always felt the same way.

Take note of the subtext behind Joseph's notes: in certain ways that matter aesthetically to many music fans, the Grateful Dead, to put it bluntly, sucked. The music rambled, the songs went on forever, Garcia wasn't much of a singer and neither was Bob Weir. "Sugaree" may be one of the Dead's greatest hits, but Emory doesn't help his cause by opening the CD with a nearly eight-minute (albeit soulful) version of it.

page 1 | 2