I have just listened to this album a couple times and I have to say I am loving it. The mellow grooves of Ice Cream on Mondays are a stellar foundation for the dessert sweetness of Vanessa's vocals. The more I hear the lyrics the more I can feel the samestory-ness that comes through someone who writes from their heart... we all have the same wants and hurts sometimes. Vanessa has harnessed the parts of her stories that speak to that one experience... beautiful...
This is Vanessa's second full-length album (after her debut, [url=]Sparkler[/url]) and the first with her Italian band, Ice Cream On Mondays. Consequentially, they re-recorded four tracks from Sparkler "to sound more like we did as a band". The end result of that colaboration is an album that's much more open and less introverted than Sparkler. But it's far from shallow. "You're Losing Me" with its jaunty melody and sad/hopeful lyrics is a good example. And the opening track, "Burning Cross", gives me goosebumps every single time I listen to it. Other songs, like "The Maybe Love Song" or "So Long To Get Here" demonstrate the (excuse that German word again) spielfreude they obviously had. But the album also features acoustic songs (try "Borrowed Time"). This album may require less time to get into it than its predecessor but it has enough depths and hidden layers to keep it interesting for a long, long time.
