I have a fondness for the perfection of the songwriter’s art and New Yorker Ellen Woloshin shows that kind of polish on her album “Water into Wine”. All eleven songs here are immaculately assembled form the finest ingredients and packaged nicely into what might be the most polite album I have heard this year.
Nothing here offends the ears. In fact, I would say that was the primary design objective. Ms Woloshin has a decent voice that gets the point across but you never feel that she has any passion for the words that she sings. Take the remarkably pedestrian cover of “We Can Work It Out” as an example. When Chaka Kahn covered that song, it no longer sounded like a Beatles song while Ms Woloshin manages to make it sound like Sunday school karaoke. Likewise, “Where Does All The Time Go” sounds like a Carly Simon song only with the emotions suppressed. Now that I think of it, too many of the songs sound like they are destined for something else so perhaps Ms Woloshin is a professional songwriter (which would explain things) and has fallen foul of the demo singer’s depersonalised approach.
So there you are – there is absolutely nothing wrong with this album and yet it just doesn’t gel. Easy to listen to and yet also easy to pass by, I have to wonder if the intent of this album was to promote the songs rather than the singer.
Available from CD Baby.