On her new album Signature, Sylvia Brooks voice is both lighter in weight and darker in color – a paradox, I know. There is more jazz and bluesy feeling early on with a deep searching for the meaning of the words. I’m intrigued by her lyrics. “The Boy That Lived There” is quite moving, and I can only wonder what led her to write “Red Velvet Rope”, about the goings-on behind the doors of those Miami nightclubs. There is a lot of lived-in heartbreak in the lyrics, and the record gets moodier and more subdued down the stretch before Leonard Cohen’s Boogie Street picks up the tempo while maintaining the downbeat mood as the last cut. The sound quality on this record is excellent.
Sylvia has come into her own with this album and her writing brings this project to a new level. I highly recommend it.
– Richard Ginell
