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The young and exceptionally talented artist Sonya Kitchell is definitely showing signs of aging with the release of her sophomore album, This Storm. Certainly not aging as in numbers-based age (she's still only 19), but aging in the form of songwriting maturity and musical wisdom. Though still a teenager, Kitchell isn't exactly lacking in the experience category. The young songstress with the larger than life voice has been studying and performing jazz standards by the likes of Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday since the age of 10. More recently, Kitchell caught the eye (or ear) of jazz legend Herbie Hancock who enlisted her to sing in his band when he toured the West Coast last year in support of his Grammy Award-winning album River: The Joni Letters, which also features Kitchell's vocals on the bonus track "All I Want." Not bad for 19.
Kitchell was a mere 16 years old when she released her first album Words Came Back To Me in 2006 to all around critical praise garnering comparisons to multi-platinum selling jazz/pop vocalist Norah Jones, and yes, the ever-influential Joni Mitchell. Words Came Back to Me was a mostly acoustic folk-driven album that explored the emotional highs and lows of life and love as seen through the eyes and heard through the bluesy voice of a girl with a very old soul.
A lot changes in two years, especially when you're an adolescent coming into your own in an uncertain world while maneuvering the turbulent waters of the "cruel and shallow money trench" that is the music business. Fast forward to present day 2008 or as Kitchell sees it, This Storm. Here, the sultry-voiced singer-songwriter has wisely spread her wings and branched out beyond her acoustic girl-with-a-guitar folk by bespeckling her second album with rock beats ("Fire" and "Effortless"), pop anthems ("Here to There") and even a little country twang ("Running") thanks in part to Grammy Award-winning producer Malcolm Burn (Danniel Lanois, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris) who recorded the album's eleven tracks at his home studio in upstate New York, a stone's throw from Kitchell's hometown of Northampton, MA. However, it is still Kitchell's gifted voice, which has matured into a more confident and aggressive instrument over time, that is the centerpiece of each and every song on This Storm.
The new album is again a reflection on life and love, but this time with a dash of politics and a lot of loneliness tossed in as a sure sign of the times. In the rocking call-to-action "Borderline," Kitchell demands that we "rise up, oh Rise Up Generation" before asking "don't you care 'bout your songs and your daughters? Oh come on, come on, come on, come on, come on! We can't stand waiting at the borderline." (Rock the Vote, anyone?) She then strips the layers down to her vocals and sparse acoustic guitar picking for "Soldier's Lament," a melancholy ode to our nation's brave soldiers.
Heartache and longing are thematic as well, with both the barn burner "Fire" and more subdued "Walk Away" symptomatic of a young woman who has been wronged by a good-for-nothing man. It's important to mention that the sentiments that Kitchell sings of throughout This Storm are impressively universal and somewhat ageless for a gal who was born in 1989. When she finally emotes "it's just too much, too much to stand, you wonder why you're dealt this hand" on the album's title track, "This Storm," its hard not to award Kitchell the "old soul" award with the understanding that her best work is probably yet to come.
