Hope Waits: Hope Waits
****
Any correlation between sales and significance has become meaningless in an are where the female voice enjoys unprecedented commercial success in almost all musical genres. The quality to quantity ratio has become a casualty, as record companies rush to package and promote minimally talented female singers with undeveloped musical abilities.
Hope Waits provides a uniformly enjoyable alternative on a debut recording permeated with common sense and decidedly uncommon sensuallity. She effortlessly transcends influences and comparisons with a fully formed and highly personalized vision and approach.
Having triumphed over all manner of early personal hardships, Waits comes across with the quiet strength and self-confidence of a survivor. She uses her Louisiana background to the fullest in a brilliantly produced album that creates a sonic gumbo where sounds bubble to the surface briefly before submerging back into the mix.
Making the most of the situation, Waits infuses some supple energy into the Tom Waits (no, he's not related) "Get Behind The Mule" mantra, delivers a testifying take of Bob Dylan's "Rind Them Bells" and drops down for some deep, horn-drenched blues on "Drown In My Own Tears." She sets "Yesterdays" free from the Billie Holiday catalog by relocating it to the Crescent City with a New Orleans horn arrangement featuring classy clarinet work from Dave Marsh. Waits is equally evocative with all musical dymanics, whether a minimalist latenight rendition of "Come Rain Or Shine" that opens with little more than acoustic bass, smoldering vocals and a splash of cymbals or the forceful "You Crossed The Line" with its pulsating, edgy energy.
Althought Waits arrives with an impressive amount of already realized potential, the three original songs, all co-written with producer Peter Malick, effectively foreshadow a further expansion of her talents. The enlightened album closer, "Ignatius," is its longest and most adventurous song.
