The debut album My Romance by Kristy feels like a time capsule. All of the tracks and the vocals feel like they were produced decades ago, but benefit from the cleaned up modern recording facilities. While Kristy has a definite direction and sense of maturity, the album does nothing to create a differentiation from every other female jazz vocalist. Kristy is a good jazz vocalist, but does nothing in the album to create any originality.
The whole of the album has a very small jazz club feeling with one or two tangents throughout. The arrangements focus on Kristy's voice rather than extravagant strings and horns emphasizing Kristy's ability to command a song with her airy vocals.
She uses her education in jazz history well, creating similar lilts in her voice to Billie Holiday. "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" and "It Could Happen To You" proves that there is beauty in simplicity when a piece is arranged correctly. The song "Teach Me Tonight" is the best of the slow jazz vocals because it's believable. Her vocals are sweet and have an inquisitive nature to it. Kristy has an ease in her vocals even hitting the higher notes of the song. The flugelhorn playing of Guido Basso is icing on the cake.
The song "Taking a Chance on Love" attempts to bring a bit more tempo into the album. While Kristy mastered the airy voice on the track, it sounds like every version of the song produced in the 1950s. Vocalists like June Christy or Dorothy Dandridge had their own variations, Christy's airy execution and Dandridge's vibrato sounded original back in the 50s, Kristy sounds too copy-cat for her own good. Another song "Just One of Those Things" had tempo issues where there were moments Kristy was being trampled by the backing music.
The classic Ray Charles song "You Don't Know Me" seems to be covered by everyone under the sun; Kristy does a decent job with the song. While she is vocally in the right area, I don't feel any emotion in the song. There's more emotion in the Dobro player Kevin Breit.
There are small touches added into the album that break away from a small jazz feeling. The Beatles classic "Blackbird" is included in the album and while it's faithful to the original, it doesn't deviate and comes off as boring. The accompaniment of Matt Brubeck on cello is a nice touch and the break in the middle is great. The problem with Kristy on "Blackbird" is that she sounds as though she has limitation on mid-tempo music or even hitting the high note in the song. The song could have benefited from being slowed down.
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