Press Reviews

All You Want

All You Want is sublime, impeccably performed British song writing at its best. Sara’s pure, distinctive voice and exhilarating guitar playing characterise this stunning debut album. Sara produces music that defies easy classification as informed by Kate Bush and Annie Lennox as it is by Jeff Buckley or Nick Drake.

Despite the obvious Americana of her dreamy jazz ballads there is something quintessentially English about Sara’s work. Her upbringing in Northampton has provided her with a backdrop of our idiosyncratic land full of tea drinking in weary commuter belt Britain. Sara’s lyrics in Turn it around are infused with a gritty domesticity, which is elevated, by her sweet and soulful singing and the addition of syncopated rhythms full of unexpected energy, setting her apart from the norm.

Sara looks likely to add to the undeniable popularity of sultry brunettes ‘singin' da Blooos’ (Winehouse, Jones, Melua), yet the level of her musicianship is light years above anything present in mainstream music. Nowhere is her mastery of the guitar more evident than in the epic Only Never. It is a swelling haunting soundscape of tumbling notes that hints at how John Williams might sound if he ever found his Mojo.

All You Want is full of unabashed loveliness. The work is positive, exhilarated and witty avoiding the indulgence and angst so prevalent in many of her contemporaries; ‘There is so much music in me that I haven’t heard yet and so many blessed sins that I’ve yet to regret.’

This album is a celebration of the spirit, a triumph of goodness and sweetness and simplicity. Accented by the occasional pounding snare, lilting piano or lone trombone, these tracks demonstrate the power of not over doing it. For it’s the little, ordinary pleasures of hum drum days that make life delicious and as Sara wisely points out in the chorus of her title track, All you want is in these things.
by Sara Gillespie