Vanessa Carlton

• Year: 2002
• Rating: 7/10
• Cat. No: 493 367-2

Track listing:

1. Ordinary Day
2. Unsung
3. A Thousand Miles
4. Pretty Baby
5. Rinse
6. Sway
7. Paradise
8. Prince
9. Paint It Black
10. Wanted
11. Twilight

A precocious young American female singer-songwriter… just what the world needs, eh? In 2002 alone, Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne and Vanessa Carlton have appeared, each barely distinguishable from the other, or so it would seem. Branch and Carlton, in particular, share a nasal vocal style that gurgles all around a note before digesting it. The potential irritant factor is admittedly high, but both artists do possess a fair degree of songwriting talent, even if their music hardly breaks new ground.

The Spirit Room, Michelle Branch’s offering, had a few months headstart, and boasted a brace of solid hit singles in Everywhere and All You Wanted, appealing but undemanding grunge-lite alt.rock/pop for the Dawson’s Creek generation. Carlton, despite the aforementioned similarities, chooses the piano as her main instrument rather than the guitar. Her ivory flourishes, best showcased on the single A Thousand Miles, betray a real musicality and confidence in her abilities. It’s one of the year’s oustanding hits, but the real test is how many of the other 11 songs that constitute this typically ungrammatically-titled debut album (Alanis, may you be eternally damned) have achieved similar levels of inspiration.

In fact, the answer is: more than might be expected. There’s a depth to Carlton’s writing that goes beyond her years without resorting to the cliched imaginings of so many teenage singer-songwriters.

Sway is a simply gorgeous track of undulating rhythms and piano chords that recalls Christopher Cross at his peak. Dreamy yet resonant. Rinse overcooks the drama a little, as does the similar Wanted, and the moments of sub Tori-ness become slightly more frequent as Be Not Nobody heads towards its conclusion.

Yet, when Carlton is capable of a swaggering, rollicking workout such as Unsung, there is every reason to believe that she might just hang around longer than many of her peers, both past and present.