Album Notes

Tara La’Dell’s voice is as elemental as the wind—and just as likely to sweep your heart in unexpected directions. In its rise and fall you hear murmurs of passion, wisps of urgent conversations, sighs of remembrance and regret. Hers is a subtle music that ensnares listeners with caresses rather than clubbing them into submission with vocal bombast. Her sound flows effortlessly from jazz to pop to country without ever straying from its firm emotional center.

Fans who discovered La’Dell through her 2007 debut album, New Way Out, will rejoice in both the artistic consistency of her new recordings and her growth as a songwriter. The exquisitely sculpted “Only You Holding Me” is an expression of love at its fullest flowering and is no doubt destined to become any listener’s favorite. “There’s a peace you bring to me/when no one else knows who or what to be,” La’Dell croons with quiet rapture. It is perfection preserved in crystal.

While “Only You Holding Me” is about savoring a love that’s mature, “When I Found You” rings with the thrill (and relief) of discovering love. Here La’Dell’s voice escalates from contentment to genuine excitement. “This feeling I’ve got for you inside/It’s what’s keeping me alive,” she confesses, with just a tinge of fear that this state of bliss could all come tumbling down.

“Nobody’s Fool” is as bluesy and forlorn as a bartender announcing last call. Here a frustrated La’Dell upbraids her man for his emotional detachment with vocal sophistication: “Why can’t you see just what you need?” she sings wistfully. “Instead you’re so cool—being nobody’s fool.” Who hasn’t been there?

La’Dell is the soul and image of country music in “Porch Swing,” a tale of two lovers who play out their lives around this one symbolic piece of furniture “I wrote this after watching a news segment following the flooding of Cedar Rapids, Iowa,” she explains. “A man was interviewed about the condition of his home after the flood, and he said he was on his way to replace his porch swing. He said the porch swing was where he and his wife sat together every night sharing their daily lives. She had passed away recently with cancer and he still cherished sitting in their swing. After I cried my eyes out listening to his story, I realized it was a great concept for a song.” It is, and La’Dell re-tells the story with such intimacy and affection you feel like you’ve been an eyewitness to the couple’s love.

Huck Finn fled to the Mississippi River to escape both an abusive father and stifling insularity. You hear that same mixture of desperation and eagerness to move on in “The River Runs,” in which the nightingale-voiced La’Dell pours out her heart about a relationship that has congealed around her.

“Your Kind Of Wrong Is My Right” conveys the fiery intensity of love that will not—and must not—be denied whatever the consequences. It is an exquisite moment magnified by risk. La’Dell’s vocal is absolutely gorgeous and the harmony with Perry Coleman blends beautifully. La’Dell admits us to the euphoria of new love in “You Make Me Believe,” a song that sparks with the electricity of raw attraction. The song rocks from start to finish, and the harmonies are euphoric.


The most durable cliché on Nashville’s Music Row is “It all begins with a song.” That’s probably true from a purely business point of view. But if the “It” refers to that peculiar magic that sets music apart from all other arts, then “It” really begins with understanding the emotional possibilities of a song—maybe even better than the writer—and then having the skill to convey them without any loss of feeling. These are Tara La’Dell’s gifts. And they’re vividly on display here.


Edward Morris, Senior Editor & Writer for CMT.com