My Family Vacation Music:Gina Sicilia's Allow Me to Confess

While I was growing up, family vacations with our family friends meant music. Our parents' music, a few cassette tapes worth put on heavy rotation for the week. The Big Chill soundtrack, Sam Cooke, the Temptations, the Beatles' Rubber Soul. . .and eventually Michael Jackson was part of the selection, too.

Steeped in this Motown, 60's soul, classic flavor for my vacation experiences, it is no surprise that the 22-year old Gina Sicilia's 2007 album, Allow Me to Confess, fit right in with our family vacation last month with my parents. While along the North Shore of Lake Superior, just south of Two Harbors, Minnesota, Sicilia's voice called back all of those great vacation feelings.

Gina Sicilia makes you a believer with her voice. I'd like to see her live, because I'm betting she can give Joss Stone a run for her money.

Allow Me to Confess jumps out with the swing jazz blues of the Lucas/Mendelsohn tune "That's a Pretty Good Love" poured over some rockabilly drums. Sicilia's originals include the doo-wop blues of "I Ain't Crazy," and the piano jump/"Minnie the Moocher"-type story song "One of Many" which completely draws you into the song's world and has the bonus of a great harp solo by Dennis Gruenling.

Sicilia doesn't quite seem settled into a ballad like "Try Me," but she appears right at home on the 60's Motown-like spin of the Clarke/Davis "Pushover" made famous by Etta James. The title track written by Sicilia is like a slowed down "When Love Comes to Town" (U2/B.B. King) with a similar Gospel feel/message although without such a strong metaphor.

But Allow Me to Confess suffers from Dave Gross' glossed over production work. Gross lays down some good blues licks as guitarist, but the mix of most tracks is too smooth. You can't feel any urgency or passion in the rhythm players' sounds behind each solo--moved to the center speaker like a taped-on picture of a boat on a painting of a lake. Even Sicilia's voice is a little too much on top of the mix. With the dirty blues quality to her sound, her sound should be down in the dirty fight of the song.

Thanks to Gina Sicilia, Swingnation Records, and the VizzTone Label Group for the review CD.