I first heard this original singer/songwriter on No Apologies - the Rock For Life - Live at Tomfest disc, but had no idea she had an album out until it accidentally fell into my lap. I love it when that happens....
It took me a few listens to get used to her deep, mature voice and odd style of singing. I still can't decide if my ears like it. She has a rich, smooth tone at times, and a scratchy, riot grrrl sound at others (Courtney Love being my only point of reference, which isn't all that close). Wendy's lyrics are almost all conversations with God, simple poetry about daily struggles and lessons learned. The music is fully groovy, acoustic-based grunge/indie rock. Paul Roraback of Grammatrain produces, and also plays guitar, drums, and/or bass on more than half the songs, which causes this to have a sound definitely similar to Grammatrain's indie CD (which was mostly unplugged). The guitar strumming on several songs is truly infectious. Indie rock descended from a psychedelic 70s past.
All of the instrumentation is cool, in fact, with a very unrehearsed, organic feel to the playing. Wendy wrote, promoted, and basically pushed this project through by her own sweat (with some help from Paul), and I'm glad she did. Be warned that the album does have a severely unfinished, sketchy demo feel to it (just seven songs also), which makes it quite tasty in places but very unfulfilling overall. Hopefully the woman is working on a full-length project as I write....
3 tocks
