SARA LOV - I Already Love You

Here's another highly skilled singer who's giving in to the temptation of the cover album: this time it's Sara Lov, already known as the appreciated female voice of Devics, as well as a captivating singer-songwriter on her first solo album, "Seasoned Eyes Were Beaming".

Two years after that record, the American artist returns with a carefully curated selection of other people's songs, reworked in a highly personal way, with that bittersweet, dreamlike touch that is her recognizable signature, further confirming the impression of deep emotional investment poured into her records.

Today more than ever, Sara Lov sees music as a way to soothe suffering and work through the wounds of her own life experience, something that on "Seasoned Eyes Were Beaming" was crystallized in songs written by her own hand, while on this collection it's entrusted to songs from a more or less recent past, chosen for their symbolic meaning rather than strictly musical reasons.

It's true that "I Already Love You" doesn't skip out on tributes to her country roots ("Just My Heart Talking" by Ron Sexsmith), childhood memories ("The World We Knew" by Frank Sinatra"), and expressions of admiration for artists like Conor Oberst and Black Heart Procession, but the choice of songs seems driven above all by a twofold aim: trying her hand at reinterpretations suited to her silky vocal register, and elevating lyrics and melodies into an emblem of that artistic message Sara Lov keeps conveying through music, even if now she's doing so through other people's words.

It's hard, indeed, to think of a random choice when listening to the nocturnal intensity of piano and strings that frames the heartfelt interpretation of the opening "Square Heart", whose words Sara seems to make her own, almost as if to exorcise her own inner ghosts. Generally speaking, the more intimate and minimal covers prove more interesting and successful, with the American artist venturing into muffled pianistic pièces, at most supported by discreet arrangements, poised between classicism and faint jazzy touches. Such is the case with the bucolic romanticism of Vashti Bunyan's "Winter Is Blue" and the delicate slowing-down applied to the quintessential "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", one of the rare instances in which a Smiths reinterpretation doesn't tend, even unconsciously, to echo Morrissey's unmistakable register.

Less convincing, on the other hand, are the revisiting of Magnetic Fields' "Pape Was A Rodeo" and "The World We Knew" itself (a bit too pompous for the context), in which the band's support livens up the record's mood through a variety of heterogeneous but somewhat predictable elements, exposing the tracks to the risk of banality that cover projects are always prone to.

Far from banal, and particularly intriguing for the Italian audience, is instead the interpretation—delivered with a diction surprisingly close to perfection—of "La Bambola", a genuine tribute from Sara Lov to the Italian public, who follow her with rare passion and such close attention that it enabled the Italian label Irma Records to release "I Already Love You". And just as this bold nod to one of the great classics of Italian music sounds a bit like a declaration of love for our country, the whole of "I Already Love You" should be regarded in the same light—a work from which it would be utterly misleading to try to extract any hidden meanings. Much more simply, it's the fine showing of a performer of great class, who chose this way to lend her voice to her passion for songs that, as the title suggests, take very little to fall in love with.

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07/02/2011