Veiled
Leah Andreone

There is some comfort in the fact that musical fads are generally short-lived. I look forward to the day when young female pop singers can once again feel secure in singing with their natural voices without resorting to artificial voice-cracks and grating falsetto in an attempt to sound like a certain multi-million-selling, jagged little singer. In the meantime, we can only wait it out and put up with a procession of artists like Leah Andreone.

The first single from Veiled, the waifish "It's Alright It's OK," sets the tone for the entire album, with its melodramatic and amateurish lyrics ("Crucified by their words / Nailed by shame") and annoying wails that sound more like an 8-year-old who slammed her finger in a car door than anything with real emotion. And it appears that no one bothered to tell Andreone that "alright" isn't even a word.

On much of the rest of the album, Andreone drapes her dubious lyrical and vocal talents over faux-blues music that is bland enough to be laughable. The subject matter of the songs is generally bleak; the themes of the songs include child abuse, dysfunctional relationships and low self-esteem, but the fifth-grade poetry of the lyrics fails to elevate them to a poignant level. When Andreone turns her attention to the traditional love song, she gets downright silly. "Imagining You," for example, ponders such questions as sentimental as "Would a shower feel the same with you?" and "If I touched you here would you get the butterflies?"

It seems that record labels are so desperate to produce the next Jagged Little Pill that they'll sign any female singer/songwriter in her 20s. Predictably, most of those artists fall short of expectations. And in that respect, Leah Andreone is no surprise.