The songs on Montreal singer-songwriter Angela Desveaux's debut album, Wandering Eyes, sound so familiar that I keep flipping through my subconscious Rolodex of Lilith Fair lineups (Sarah McLachlan? Shawn Colvin?), alt-country warhorses (Gillian Welch? Lucinda Williams?), Laurel Canyon folktresses (Judee Sill?), and alt-radio also-rans (Amanda Marshall? Tracy Bonham?), in order to place the source. Of course, there isn't one: None of these 10 songs are covers; instead, this déjà vu hints at Desveaux's gifts for blending strains of folk, pop, and country into a naturalistic whole and for penning songs that sound immediately, comfortably familiar.
These are qualities reinforced by her lyrical and vocal restraint. Desveaux isn't a showy singer; her voice is plain as the peeling wallpaper on her album cover, but she has a subtle feminine steeliness that comes from through on slower, sparser songs like "Feel Alright". Lyrically, she withholds concrete details or specific references, trading instead in cursory descriptions of romantic conundrums-- what some might call traditional pop songwriting, in that she often tries to nail down a specific predicament or emotion in just a couple of minutes. She speaks the alt-country language fluently and fluidly, mastering the arts of the chipper chorus on opener "Heartbeat" and of confessional gravity on "If Only".
This sort of tasteful alt-country, however, seems like a highly competitive genre at the moment, crowded with mainstays like Lucinda and indie soloists like Amy Millan and Jenny Lewis, not to mention Nashville upstarts like Julie Roberts and Ashley Monroe working these styles and sounds back into country radio. To differentiate yourself from the pack, you need a strong personality to come through in your singing and songwriting. This commodity seems sparse on Wandering Eyes. Backed by a band that's merely capable but never really outstanding, Desveaux plays the part too perfectly, too politely, with no rough edges or imperfections to suggest much of an identity behind the songs. As a result, even at their darkest, these songs never seem to have very high stakes: on "Heartbeat" and "Familiar Times" she sings about keeping her emotions firmly in check, but there's never any convincing danger of losing control. The same lyrical and vocal restraint that makes Wandering Eyes sound so warmly familiar also renders the album bland and hollow, such that by the time the closer "Good Intentions" fades out, you still have no sense of the person behind the songs. Anyone could have written them; anyone could be singing them.
