I have finally found my true love. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything - no, this took a while. Something felt right when my ears were graced with “Love Song”, offered as the free single of the week via iTunes (Steve Jobs, you’re getting a bottle of wine and a wedding invitation, please come). After this, it was only a matter of time till I got my hands on the full album –
Little Voice, for the slow people out there. And thus, it was only a matter of time before it became clear to me: Sara Bareilles is my perfect woman. She’s attractive (in that old-fashioned, natural sort of way), she [also] shares an admiration for Ben Gibbard, she’s got an amazing voice, and she writes the right kind of “thinking man’s” pop that I love to blare to my friends (who deem me a mere metalhead) while I sing along in my unusually strong and high falsetto. It doesn’t even matter that she’s ten years older than me, really. So, if you or one of your “people” is reading this Sara, please consider the idea of going to dinner with me sometime (perhaps we could double date with Gibbard and Zooey Deschanel). Let me explain where this adoration comes from: your major label debut
Little Voice.
Little Voice is easily one of the best pop albums of 2007, and seemed to go unnoticed for quite some time. It’s got all the basic ingredients I like a pop album to have: strong yet simplistic songwriting; complementary, low-key songwriting; little to no filler; loads of vocal and instrumental hooks, and of course, an author with a great voice and a charming persona. There’s also a strong sense of identity that is evoked by every facet of Bareilles: her voice, her lyrics and even her looks. This “identity” is that of that local girl trying to someday make it big, while she plays open mic nights at coffee shops and balances work with college or high school. Even after
Little Voice has gone gold, “Love Song” has become a hit single and Bareilles has been nominated for several Grammys, the album still bleeds this image to this day, making
Little Voice feel delightfully down to earth.
If pressed to come up with the best thing about this album, it would have to be its diversity. I’m sure that almost every reviewer in the world has said that about an album they enjoy, but believe me when I say that almost every song on
Little Voice works well and brings something different to the table. An assortment of influences such as funk, jazz, folk and even hip-hop make their way about two-thirds of the songs, and even the more straightforward songs (“Love Song”, “Between the Lines” and “Gravity”) could each be considered highlights. “Bottle it Up” and “Love on the Rocks” effortlessly ride the line between funk and pop, “One Sweet Love” sounds like an acoustic folk song with major label production, and the one-two punch of “Come Round Soon” and “Morningside” excel as jazz-laced, swaggering discourses on romantic trials.
This would all mean nothing is Bareilles couldn’t handle whatever she tries, but her voice comes in at a very close second concerning
Little Voice’s selling points. Her soothing feminine voice guides each and every one of the twelve tracks at hand, and her range stretches farther than the various outside influences she successfully works with. This becomes quite apparent after a couple listens to the album, such that it’s very hard to pick a song that best displays her talent - nearly all of them do.
The final culmination of all these strengths is an album with enough quality to more than make up for its lack of originality. While Sara Bareilles isn’t doing anything new, her ability to write and perform wonderful pop music makes her an exciting new face in the realm of modern music. By no means is the album perfect, but any imperfections are forgiven once the songs get stuck in your head and then almost forgotten when they fail to lose that initial appeal. Although I fear that this future diva may become stale with further attempts, for now I pray that this little voice doesn’t fade away anytime soon.
Recommended tracks:
Love Song
Morningside
Fairytale
Gravity
