“I don’t think of it as a soul record…
just came never to think of the idea of soul as being a category.”
Born and raised in Washington DC, while sharing time on her Grandma’s 69-Acre farm outside of Augusta, Georgia, city-country, R&B-Soul, just who is Alice Smith? If you listen to her debut album “For Lovers, Dreamers and Me”, she is a little bit of everything. Besides the nod to the amphibious crooner, Kermit, I also hear:
- Echoes of Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train” in her second song “Woodstock.”
- A touch of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” in the final “Love Endeavor.”
- A sliding steel guitar slipping “Now That I” into a Broadway country ballad.
- A funky-blues lament about the current state of pop in “Fake Is the New Real.”
Speaking of Pop, my favorite song on this album is unabashedly so. It is in “New Religion” that Smith finds her stride and is willing to let loose on what may be one of the most wonderful voices I’ve heard in a while. It’s full, it’s bold and when it warms up, it separates Smith from most of the current female singers on the scene as indicated on the title song “Dreams.”
How Smith approaches this song is interesting. It starts sounding like a relative of Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice.” But then like a prime athlete waiting to excel, Smith starts to deliver her lyrics with a pop-like libretto. And as the song continues, she let’s her phrases expand deeper and longer but still holding back, waiting, letting the moment build until the end when she lets it all go, giving a hint of what she’s capable of.
I’m looking forward to hearing more from her.
