Soulful and Raw
Wiley Townsend Book | Olympia, WA USA | 12/02/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Nouela Johnston's creative piano playing and raw husky, almost Billie Holiday-esque voice create a great lead for one of the darkest, most optimistic, and most depressingly real albums of this year. She manages to say things we've all thought at one point, and yet have never heard a song about, there is a certain black humor to her very straight-forward expressions of some of humankind's most embarrassingly... human qualities. However there is also such a beauty in her expression of herself - especially in the heart wrenching "For Now"; a tale of unrequited love doomed to forever remain that way, despite her almost desperate optimism - that anyone can relate to what she has to say, we have all had our pathetic moments, our moments of clinging to hope in what we know is a doomed situation, which is ultimately the underlying theme in this album, accompanied by a sort of tragic beauty.
I would recommend anyone to buy this and give it a listen, for Nouela's work transcends genres, it is of the human genre."