Croatian-born Lela Kaplowitz delivers a collection of songs that expressively hearken back to the singer/songwriter era of the 1970s, reviving the spirit of such ground-breaking artists as Carole King, Laura Nyro, and Roberta Flack...

Lela Kaplowitz has been lauded by jazz vocal legend Sheila Jordan as “an extremely talented vocalist” and Bobby McFerrin as having a “wonderful voice.” This made me wonder if there was another Lena Kaplowitz doing the circuits. I only ask because on To One, Kaplowitz's vocals are a little all over the place. It's almost as though each song was recorded in just one take. While I know it's designed to sound like an album from the past, it still sounds like an album out of time. It feels like a lounge singer's poorly conceived self release project from the '70s/'80s. The songs are twee and never really give her the chance to shine.

Take 'Everything Is Possible' for example. The lyrics sound like they were written by an 8-year-old... who had to do it for a school project, but really wanted to play on Fortnight instead, and so wrote the first load of tosh that sprang into their mind.

On the title track 'To One' Kaplowitz seemed to be out of tune with the band... quite distractingly so... and worse still, at times she appeared to be singing a different tune to that of the band.

I really can't fathom who on earth this will appeal to. It's too twee for a modern audience and fans of this sort of release from the '70s already have their favourite artists to replay.

3

Nick Smithson