Sophia Darcell is an interesting, talented singer. Her recording is well produced and professional, with a solid band backing up her vocals. It's all there. Or is it? In my lifetime, I've known a lot of performers like Sophia Darcell, seen them perform, and been impressed by their talent. They're big stars in the hometown, perhaps even regionally, but they never break out of the box. Some intangible spark necessary to set the artist apart is missing.

Even though Darcell has had a respectable career to date, with tour dates up and down the U.S. east coast, one previous CD release, and reasonable amounts of airplay, her sound still feels like what one would hear in a local jazz club. There's a comfort level that will bring in the hometown fans but may not be enough to hook the national audience in any big way.

Darcell has a full, rich voice and she uses it well, seeming to have a very good grasp of the essentials of popular jazz and R&B singing styles. There's energy and often even passion in her singing. In some songs, she approaches but never quite achieves a level of sensuality usually present in torch songs. Listening to her sing is an enjoyable experience, but the emotions never reach out and grab the listener by the soul.

It's problematic that, while this is Sophia Darcell's album, I found myself as often listening to the backing musicians as I was her. In fact, at some points in some songs, the players in the band fully distracted me from her singing. To be fair, this is not so much that Darcell is not good at what she does but that the musicians are at least as good and sometimes add a lot more spice to this music than she does.

I was especially taken by the trumpet and saxophone tracks. Some of Ken Watters' trumpet tracks are especially sweet, very reminiscent of vintage Freddy Hubbard. As soon as that horn starts blowing, I'm swept right out of Darcell's vocal and into another lovely world. The sax tracks by Michael Burton and Sonny Calo are as sweet but, unfortunately, often too low in the mix and too often not there at all.

Some of the instrumentation is distracting for other reasons. The drumming sometimes tends toward the hokey, bringing memories of the bongos and congas in Nineties singer-songwriter folk music releases. There's also a weird, distorted sort of electronic thing that shows up in some of the songs. I haven't quite figured it out, but it could be created by electric guitar or by keyboard. However it may have been created, like some of the drum sounds it doesn't belong in the cool, jazzy R&B sound being presented here.

It's clear that Sophia Darcell has the talent necessary to succeed, and she certainly has access to talented musicians and a professional recording facility. She's young, so may just need time and experience to discover that spark within herself that will set her on fire. Until then, I can't see her rising above the regionality of the U.S. eastern seaboard. Still, that's quite a respectable level of success for a young artist. Darcell has time to take it to the next level. I hope she'll make the leap.

You can learn more about Sophia Darcell and her music at Sophia Darcell's Joint or on MySpace.

Soul Eclectic
Sophia Darcell
GrooveCraft Entertainment Group
2006
12 tracks