After years of leading the famous Jitterbug Vipers and building a reputation in the Austin jazz scene, Sarah Sharp comes to us with a record that is intimate, warm and emotionally experienced rather than eager to impress. After nine years of a prestigious residency at the Elephant Room, she recorded this album in the studio of local guitar legend Eric Johnson, who offered the space after being mesmerised by one of her performances. That sense of earned intimacy seeps into every corner of the record.
The 11-track album crosses several genres, from jazz to folk to Americana, offering a wide palette with which Sarah offers an emotional journey of such intensity that it will not leave anyone indifferent. The arrangements are airy, light, intimate and wildly sensual, never enriched or weighed down, always leaving room for the most convincing instrument: Sarah’s voice.
Most of the tracks on the album are familiar, at least in their origin, because they are very well known. And it was undoubtedly a huge risk to tackle so many cult songs on a first album. But Sarah transforms them so profoundly that they almost become originals, with all their poetic essence, their narrative power.
Projects like this don’t usually attract much attention or even cause some rejection. Tackling well-known and cult titles like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is risky, very risky, and most artists who do it end up often seeming like they’re committing sacrilege rather than paying homage because these songs seem so sacred, almost untouchable, like something to be protected rather than reinvented.
Titles like “For No One” (Lennon & McCartney), or cult titles like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (Bob Dylan), “Moon River” (Henri Mancini), “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás” (Osvaldo Farrés) or even “The Boy From Ipanema” (Antonio Carlos Jobim) are transcended by the arrangements and Sarah’s caressing voice.
The first listen of this album seduces you, immediately. The second disturbs you a little more, makes you shiver, and the third listening touches your soul because Sarah’s voice touches your heart, like Cupid’s arrow.
The key to the quality of this first album is that it is not rushed. It is built patiently, detail by detail, arrangement by arrangement. Everything supports Sarah’s voice, and the musicians are neither sidelined nor erased. The instrumental accompaniments, delicate and finely crafted, offer moments of quiet exaltation.