Want to know how to get to the front of review queue when you send in your album to Bluesbunny Towers? Well, that’s a secret or at least it was a secret until now as the answer is simple – be a woman. Something like 80% of all albums submitted come from male singers or bands so it is actually refreshing to hear a woman’s voice and indeed that proved the case with Lisa Brigantino with her album “Wonder Wheel”.
Ms Brigantino, so we learn from her bio, used to be in an all girl Led Zeppelin tribute band called Lez Zeppelin (wonder how long they spent coming up with that name?) but “Wonder Wheel” is far from an out and out rock album. In fact, there’s a lot of variety in style here from the somewhat awkward acoustic “Used To Be A House” through the wondrously poptastic “This Town” to “I’ll See You In My Dreams” which is to all intents and purposes a showtune! This does give the album something of an inconsistent feel but I’m quite happy that Ms Brigantino decided to experiment with her song writing and performance approaches as it brought the opportunity to show more than a touch of elegance and, let’s be honest, beauty. Those female harmonies on “Sarah”, for example, are a pure post-hippy pleasure and likewise the delicate syncopation to be found in “I Gotta Find Me Something” is a retro pick-me-up.
All told, this is an album that you probably will dip in to rather than one that you will listen to all the way through. That said, it is still an album that you will actually want to dip into to regularly and, I admit it, I ending up liking this album a lot. I feel a big smile coming on.