Lucinda Peters - Desert Stars

This second CD from Sydney-based singer-songwriter Lucinda Peters contains more mature originals than its predecessor, Show Me The Way To Your Heart, and includes a couple of standards, Dindi and Here�s That Rainy Day. Again she has attracted top-flight musicians (playing classical guitar and acoustic bass herself), including a tasteful string quartet and James Muller (guitar), Phil Slater (trumpet) and Matt McMahon (keyboards). The instrumentation varies across her songs, which have an uninsistent romantic feel, turning moody and ethereal on the two desert related tracks of the title, or even hinting at Middle Eastern modalities (Thought About you). The album is firmly jazz referenced in a contemporary way, one piece using her multi-tracked voice as backing for scat choruses. Peter�s voice is softly expressive and beautifully controlled, drifting into a celestial sphere to display her pitch-perfect, yet relaxed and delicate upper range. John McBeath - The Australian