Chicagos Independent Music Review

Amy’s sound is akin to Norah Jones – but less sultry. Her airy vocals and sweet, girl-next door persona really shines through during her second album, Mutiny of Shadows. Let me start with saying that this is a great up and coming singer who isn’t afraid to put it all out there for the audience. Amy likes to stay the course with her songs, starting in a certain key and staying in that register throughout the song. All around her jazzy bass lines and neat progressions abound, but she never satisfies my hope for superior lyrics matched with tried and true painful performance – there are times that I can’t bring myself to believe in the heartbreak she is selling. It is certainly jump up from her first album, and believe you me, she hits all the right notes – there aren’t any errors musically – it’s really one of the finer records I’ve heard; but as my teaching experience taught me, the higher you hold the bar, the better the students become. She understands how to use specific imagery in her songs, but sometimes she chooses imagery that is more akin to an inside joke and not totally universal – case in point – “Nobody Like Jimmy” the ‘Jimmy’ character probably could of been replace by ‘you’ – and it would give an all encompassing tale that others could relate to. Despite these (really) minor qualms, this is a really great sounding record overall – without a doubt, Amy is certainly an accomplished songstress who, all in all, has given us direct songs professed by a songbird we could all wake up in the morning to.