"Under the weight of your wings..."

Anna Nalick's Wreck of the Day is a promising and lovely album. She is a great and gifted songwriter and singer. When I first heard the song Breathe (2am) last year, her lyrics blew me away. All the songs are good. The best song on the record is In the Rough,:"I've got your love letters and I threw them all away, I hear you think that I'm crazy, I'm driving 95 and I'm driving you away, I shine a little more lately." The title-track is a sweet, mellow song,:"Desperately close to a coffin of hope, I'd cheat destiny just to be near you." Bleed is a powerful and willful song, and Paperbag is a song about accepting yourself and letting others in. A solid debut from Anna Nalick, hope her next album is just as good.

On the Fence

I'm undecided about this album. I bought it, like many others, after hearing Breathe (2 AM) on the radio and being blown away. I've heard that she is supposed sound like Sarah McLachlan. Short answer: not really. She has a strong voice, but she needs to get her own sound, and grow a little more. A good debut, with potential, but there is a lot of room for improvement. I'd like to see Ms. Nalick get a little more originality, integrity: in short, to mature a little, and find her unifying own sound and style. With that said, this album has some good songs on it, like "Breathe (2 AM), "In the Rough", "Paper Bag", and "Consider This".

Not a songwriter.

Ok voice and slick production. Contrived, somewhat juvenile lyrics. Well, maybe not the lyrics. I can't tell, b/c there seems to be a disconnect between Nalick and the emotions. I feel as if she is acting, working to convey what she thinks these feelings must be like. It gives me reason to believe that this is a case of pretty girl+ok voice+marketing. On VH1 upcoming artist promotion she is marketed as the next talented singer songwriter. Now I see she is being compared to the considerable talents of Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Fiona Apple, Jewel and even Alanis Morisette. I'm sorry, but that's laughable. There is nothing raw that exposes any deep truths. Songwriting is more than the sum of it's parts. It cannot be refined to a formula, which is a very pop thing. This is formulaic. Each song sounds like she is even mimicking another artist. On one song she sounds like she is mimicking Fiona Apple (on her first disc), and then one song sounds like Wilson Phillips. I am not kidding. Wilson freakin' Phillips. I know anyone under 30 may not get it when I say that the longer you are around, the more you are less swayed by marketing and production. I know if you were on board with what I'm saying so far I'm gonna blow it with my next comment. However, Ashlee Simpson had some of the best songwriters in the business write her music and she has a great gritty voice that straddles the pop/rock sound and gives her songs more edge than this treacle. She has been excoriated for not performing live on a certain show, but the songs remain well written and performed. At first I didn't appreciate having her shoved down my throat as pre-packaged crap, but eventually I realized she didn't write it anyway. However, it bugs me that there is no real songwriter here and she is marketed that way. It is an affront to those who can really write. Check out KT Tunstall (also courtesy VH1 new artist promo). Writes, plays and sings with maturity. 2 stars for not being Britney Spears.