Jane Lui
Teargirl
Self-Produced
rated : 3 1/2 stars

Nothing can change the fact that this girl can sing. Jane's cooly confident voice is a powerful but perfect-pitched pretty one that commands you to emote along with her and to listen with everything you have in you. She permeates. And with jarring and remarkably modeled argeggios, Jane Lui is a textbook singer's perfect girl: a neo-soul, an operatic pop girl, a tear girl. And like the name of her newest release, Teargirl, Jane Lui's voice is one which draws out the estrogen-charged sensuality of passion at its tearful and emotional best with self-examination, introspection, and an underlying "you go girl!" resonating deeply within the piano-laced sway of her sound.

And like i said, nothin can change the fact that this girl can sing. That's what makes Teargirl a singer's album rather than a musician's album. While Lui's fasincation with musical composition and the piano keys began at age four, the totality of Teargirl acts as a showcase for Lui's remarkably unreal vocal talent and serves less in the capacity to showcase her abilities as a piano player. She keeps it simple - but substantial. And it works.

The prevalence of the piano on each of Lui's songs serves as an anchor for her vocal acrobatics and braids of melody, rhythm n' girly blues. Lui's ability as a songwriter is evident but, more so, Jane Lui's angelic but agile vocal narration is the essence of Teargirl - an arrangement of beautifully wrought harmonic utterances.

But Lui is savvy, and i suspect that the aim of Teargirl is to be delicately amassed. Teargirl lightly graces the substantiality of Lui's voice with placid percussion and the prevalence of the piano, while she pretty much allows her voice to incandesce. Her brilliance as a musician is found in her ability to hold back rather than run off into symphonic synths and samples - much like the work common on her musical alma mater, Starline Theorie. In direct opposition to Theorie's expansive soundscapes, Lui holds you in one place - in the heart - keeping her sensual delights audio-based. She appeals to the wannabe Streisand within us all. www.janeshands.com