While this group is female-fronted piano music, you're not going to mistake it for Tori Amos or even Regina Spektor. Maybe there's a bass player in here, but essentially it's piano, vocals and drums.Nouela Johnston has been in a Seattle jazz-pop combo called Mon Frere for a while. This release probably just strips the jazz off. Her voice isn't unlike Regina's, or Norah Jones for that matter. But the tunes are a bit more riffy and the drums will keep the indie librarian chicks head-bobbing and pogo-ing.
Still, the format is a bit limiting. Maybe this album is supposed to serve as an elaborate demo. I admit, that I'm am often a minimalist when it comes to the rock scene, but it seems to me that within the realms of pop, I wouldn't mind seeing the chick singers get some larger accompaniment. I certainly am not talking about the Beyoncé autotune treatment. Just more instrumentation, a string quartet, some horns.
And Nouela deserves it. She's written strong songs that the fellas aren't going to be ashamed taking their girlfriends to go see. She never hits the gospel-blues desperate genius of Fiona Apple, but it would be a good replacement to the whiny singer-songwriter dudes recording their coup d'états in isolated forests. (3.5 of 5 stars)
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