Katie Garibaldi
Album: Follow Your Heart
Label: Living The Dream
Tracks: 13
Website: http://katiegaribaldi.com/

Katie Garibaldi is a San Francisco based artist who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Amy Winehouse. This album is the seventh of her career and is totally self-penned.

The music is a mix of soft rock, fold and pure country. As a self-confessed lover of all three genres I was looking forward to receiving and reviewing this album. Reviewing music is somewhat similar to discussing religion, a very personal experience. The old adage "you cannot please all of the people all of the time" comes to mind. The music industry is an incredibly hard one to succeed in. You need either bundles of talent or luck or preferably both.

As a self-confessed C&W fan I have been to Nashville, love the TV series and have seen some of the best female artists around including Dolly Parton, Suzy Bogguss, Trisha Yearwood, Alison Krauss, Gretchen Peters and many more. I feel therefore I am pretty well placed to judge and comment on Katie. Herein lays a problem, for me at least. I do not think Katie's voice is good enough to compete with some of these other stars. She has been compared to Jewel and Sheryl Crow on the website but I think she falls somewhat short vocally of these two as well.

To be totally fair to Katie and to avoid a knee jerk reaction on first listen, I have listened to this album now about six or seven times to see if my opinion of her vocal qualities would improve, but they have not. She is obviously a very talented young lady and a superb song writer. The album is full of really nice songs with excellent lyrics and some of the backing is outstanding. She is an accomplished musician to support her imaginative song writing.

I feel slightly uncomfortable giving this album less than a glowing review as having read about Katie I feel that I would really like her as a person if I met her. After all, how many artists do you know that acknowledge God as "my eternal co-writer, protector, advisor, and dream fulfiller for always guiding me to follow my heart." I love that!

As I have stated above, some of Katie's' music is outstanding and I would like to hear it sung by other artists to see what they could make of it. Perhaps her future is in song writing or perhaps I am just wide of the mark in my assessment of her vocal qualities. I do hope so.

However her career progresses, I wish her every success as I really do believe there is a deep well of talent to tap into here. The voice is just not for me. Sorry Katie.

Rory M Stanbridge