Strong stuff.
Singer-songwriter Tori Sparks made her debut in 2003 with a self-released EP that seemed to open a door for her. Platinum Plus Universal released her first full-length cd Rivers + Roads and paid for a video, but it meant no breakthrough, as that small label went bankrupt.
Since then Sparks tours continuously through the US and Europe and made her third CD. On it, she sings and plays guitar with Steve Bowman – drums, Viktor Krauss – bass, Will Kimbrough – guitars, Fats Kaplin – accordion, pedal steel, fiddle and David Henry (R.E.M., Josh Rouse and Cowboy Junkies a.o. – cello, keyboards, trumpet, euphonium and percussion behind her.
Sparks’ thirteen songs were inspired by stories that people told her on one of her American tours. She sings an alternative catalogue about love from within: the change into a strait jacket, the inability to let loss go, clinging to a destructive love or the necessity to let a lover go.
Influences from blues, folk and singer-songwriter merge to appealing, rounded roots songs with natural melodies. Sparks’ seductive vocals are at the heart of music with details that are well-thought out. Her singing is powerful and intimate, full of regret and longing, but always emotional, both in the middle register and when she effortlessly sings at the crystal clear top of her voice.
In doing so, Sparks internalizes her conversation partners’ feelings that way and forges universal feelings from their anecdotes, which she describes on her website. That way this strong third CD makes curious to her previous two.
***1/2