3 out of 5

Produced by: Steve Revitte

Label: 54’40 or Fight!

In the singer-songwriter genre, setting aside those more outre examples which might require different criteria, you’re mainly faced with a few chords and recognizable chord progressions and two essential questions: Do I like what this person is singing about, and do I like how they sing about it?

On Simone’s second 54’40 release, the first question becomes a bit superfluous for us English speakers, as the album is an adaptation of a set of Russian folk songs from poet Yanka Dyagileva, and they are sung to us in their original language.  So while song titles and tone may give us some indications of subject matter, the concept of music being a universal language is accurate in that I can acknowledge that these are songs, and I can make judgments on them.  But a foreign language is not automatically translated via this universality, and Simone sticks to a generally sorrowful-seeming husky croon throughout, so that’s about as much emotion as one can glean without knowing Russian.

So we’re left with how Simone sings about, in which case: See above.  There’s not much variety to Alina’s delivery.  She hits her highs and her husky lows and get a little feisty yelly hear and there, but returns to her morose, whispery sing -speak soon enough.  And this default, unfortunately, isn’t notable enough to bump Alina into that category of artists that demand a wider audience; if I may marginalize, she sounds like she’d be at home in a coffee shop.

Which isn’t to deride the singcraft, as Simone has a smart grasp of composition, bolstering her songs with enough sidesteps to avoid mundanity, and knowing to drop in strings or drums or a little distortion to doll the picture up.  Steve Revitte’s production keeps this nice and live sounding, so it paints a very “present” picture that surely isn’t trying to hide anything.

This all means the disc is what it is, though, which is a well-played and intentioned – but derivative, and robbed of lyrical inpact – indie folk album.