Review: Sarabeth Tucek, Sarabeth Tucek

The pale skin, the sensually parted lips, the heavy fringe caressing eyes smoky with kohl: Sarabeth Tucek's perfect profile on her album sleeve immediately brings to mind Nico. At her best, Tucek's pellucid voice lives up to the comparison. On opening track Something for You, it wafts with a softly scented warmth above the gentlest of guitar accompaniments; on Ambulance, it broods and brims with tears; on Nobody Cares, the album's lightest song, it is buoyant with loving humour. Nothing in the guitar-led music, lightly spiced with pump organ, pedal steel and a sprinkle of strings, detracts from its pristine delivery of the lyrics. The trouble is, few of Tucek's self-penned lyrics are worthy of such attention. She deals, with varying degrees of opacity, in relationship troubles and loneliness, but you know something is amiss when the most attention-grabbing couplet on the album runs: "You're a poet, don't ya know it."