Wendy Webb
Album: This Is The Moment
Label: Spooky Moon
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.wendywebbmusic.com

Had I not known otherwise, I could easily have been persuaded that that this was some long lost, undiscovered gem from the halcyon era of Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters. Indeed, the opening track, 'Venus Is Rocking In The Cradle Of The Moon', prompted an vision of Webb as a female Jackson Browne, with the song conjuring, both in its music and lyrics (though the latter are actually by Charles John Quarto), the classic moments of 'For Everyman' and 'Late For The Sky'.

It turns out, however, that Webb, who's surely related to Jim by talent if not by blood, comes from Iowa and, now based in Florida, this is her fourth, having released her debut in 2003. Listening further, while Browne remains a reference point - and an acknowledged influence - closer comparisons would be to Carole King (especially on the sax stained 'Western Channel Of The Sky'), Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro and the now sadly largely forgotten Wendy Waldman, although, having said that, there's definite touches of 'Moondance' warm soul Morrison to 'This Is The Moment' and the lovely 'You're My Friend'.

Working in an array of musical colours that draws upon folk, pop, jazz and the blues, and backed by a trio that handles guitars, acoustic bass, percussion, strings and horns while she plays piano and occasional acoustic guitar, her superbly modulated voice rises and falls across songs that, ripe with nature imagery, address relationships, dreams and vignettes of America.

'Florida' itself is a piano led love letter to her adopted home, but the state also figures in the sea-themed 'Homespun', which (with a piano line evocative of Roy Bittan's work for Springsteen) references Sanibel and the Everglades as she sings "I comb the beach of consequence, I calibrate the waves, I christen every ghost ship that forever freed the slaves." There's a wider vista to ;Big Blue Sky; as she puts aside "the prisons of the past" heads out across America in company with the ghosts of Kerouac and Cash, visiting "the western shore where I was born" and the river that flows from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico.

The sea washes up too on the heady reminiscences of love in the quivering vocal, classical guitar-accompanied melancholic blues ;I Will Remember; (a touch of Janis Ian here, perhaps) and the piano-backed mood picture of 'Long Day In The Sun' where, "salt sweat on my skin", she sings of the ocean and the miracle of life.

There's not a remotely weak track here, but, along with 'Venus', I'm particularly taken with 'All The Boys On Saturday', a sepia-toned meditation on years past and lost innocence with its lines about bored young boys and darling dancing girls heading for the downtown ballrooms seeking for the tenderness of a first caress and "chasing dreams down the boulevard." Platinum plated singer-songwriter AOR of the highest order, had Webb indeed been around in the early 70s, she too might be a legend now. I see no reason why that can't start here.

Mike Davies