sarah masen

JJT - truetunes.com

She was the talk of the indy scene last summer. This summer, she’s the toast of Nashville. Although that transformation can be less than moving, artistically speaking, Sarah Masen has made all the right moves. After signing with Charlie Peacock’s visionary new label, re:think, and thus earning his production talents as well, she proceeded to create a record that will leave insecure women artists, both hopefuls as well as those who are established, squirming.

Right out of the gate, Masen has put her best foot forward and has set a new standard. Her self-written songs are intelligent, well-crafted, and catchy. Her music manages to fit in with current trends in modern pop without succumbing to the temptation to copy Tori Amos or Sarah McLaghlan. Peacock, whose production style has been viewed as overpowering in the past, has brought just the right amount of shimmer to these tracks. The result is a full-tilt winner.

The album’s opening songs, All Fall Down and Driving Downtown, are solid pop tunes with overdriven guitars providing a rich backdrop for Masen’s excellent and expressive voice. From the live drum tracks to the organ sounds to the vocal processing, this is a very live sound. Although the word is over-used, organic works as a descriptive. Despite the full-band sound, that the songs were written by Masen on an acoustic guitar is never lost. are set to a groovy, laid-back tune that falls between Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side and Steely Dan’s Deacon Blues, with Masen’s being most passionate and immediate vocal delivery of the bunch.

Break Hard the Wishbone is probably the stand-out here. The compelling lyrics

Whereas the aforementioned pop tunes will assure the establishment that Masen is to be taken seriously, Wishbone drives home the point that she’s more than just another cute girl singer. The attachment between her vocal delivery and the lyrics is stunning, as only a singing writer can muster. Instead of finding one or two vocal tricks to use as calling cards (as McLaghlan, O’Riorden, and Amos seem to have done), Masen meets the lyric halfway and allows melody, diction, and pronunciation to add meaning to the already meaningful words. This is special.

Another gutsy standout is her cover of Victoria Williams’ Love. The task of adding something to a song that’s already so brilliant, and is still so new, obviously wasn’t a problem for Masen. Her interpretation is true enough to satisfy Williams fans, and it’s fresh enough to warrant her usage of it. (And the Harrison-esque guitar lead is particularly sweet.)

Sarah Masen is a singer/songwriter who has more going for her at the very beginning of what’s sure to be an exciting career than most manufactured artists develop after years of doing what producers, writers, and marketing people tell them to do. Re:think has hit gold with this one.

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By John J Thompson. This article originally appeared at http://www.truetunes.com