This Is Book’s Music

It’s bluesy, it’s jazzy, and it’s downright sassy, and for all of the good reasons. I speak of Denise La Grassa and her rootsy voice that she shares on her album April Dreams (Deelagee).

Sometimes when you have a vocalist that is capable of covering a wide range, you tend to get a few who tend to go overboard as if they’re trying to prove a point over and over and over. It’s nice in the first two songs, but then it gets bored and you’re hoping for a new gimmick to pop into the mix. La Grassa is not that type of singer, she is refined and doesn’t give her all on the first two songs. You have to warm up to it, and by doing so you’re also getting a chance to hear her take on close-to-full-on-rockers to fantastic ballads, and you get that in tracks like “Loving For Loves Sake”, “Waited A Lifetime”, and “Sweet Talk”.

What’s also a plus is the fact that she wrote the majority of these songs (all but one of the 10 are hers), so she’s allowing fans and fellow musicians and singers to not only hear her, but also give them a chance to know her as a songwriter. She carries the spirit of jazz vocalists from the past to the present, but she can rip a pretty mean blues, and it has that rawness that Bonnie Raitt is known for. There’s no reason to not get caught up in her April Dreams, you will listen and find a reason to stay for awhile.