Issue date: 3/1/02 Section: Features

Back in the day, I developed a musical inclination for female singers. While I do not hold any specific favorites anymore, I still have a female act or two very close to my heart.

Having been a typical, hormonally driven youth, I cannot discern whether it was because of the music or simply because I was in love with the female herself that I held such a preference (though, in my own defense, I am not that hormonally driven anymore). Whatever the cause, the music still has to do something for me.

So perhaps this strange (coming from a male) love of female artists influenced my picking up of the debut album, The Herethereafter, from an artist whom I had not heard before, Miranda Lee Richards. Even if Virgin Records had produced it, her album looked very promising. A recent chauvinistic string of album purchases also made me long for that good female crooning.

There is nothing on The Herethereafter to dislike, I suppose. The music is good, and the words are not too corny or forced. Ms. Lee Richards wrote all the songs and music herself with occasional help from her main backing musician, Rick Parker.

The album just feels comfortable and relaxed, if somewhat overproduced. While I would have no problems putting it in my player and listening to it through for the afternoon while reading, typing up a paper or talking to my friends on a warm Friday afternoon, background music does not a great album make.

While I am reluctant to make comparisons to other artists, in order to treat Miranda Lee Richards as an artist in and of herself, I think she sounds very much like Sheryl Crow on the faster songs. On her slower songs, meanwhile, her voice takes on the quality of Leigh Nash, lead singer of Sixpence: None the Richer, who brought us that incredibly trite but catchy song "Kiss Me."

Miranda Lee Richards' songs do have catchy phrasing, but the music is fairly unoriginal. Maybe that is why I do not feel bad about comparing her to other musicians: it seems as though she is trying to sound like other artists.

A few gems on the album stand out from the crowd and even hint that Richards does have her own sound hiding under there.

"Folkin' Hell" and "Dandelion" stand out especially from the rest of the songs. In these, she writes a good melody and backs it up with everything from a piano to strings to a harmonica. The lyrics are a little more original, though she does let lines like "Delicate as a rose" slip in from time to time. Let us assume for Miranda Lee Richards' own sake that it was Rick Parker's (whoever that is) influence on the words that created the most cliché lines.

Miranda Lee shows potential for stronger future releases if she could find some breathing room from under her Virgin Megastore Producers' control. Her voice is strong and beautiful, and her melodies are definitely fun.

For the more musically pretentious out there, you will probably get bored, but you need to get off you freaking high horse, you turtleneck-wearing trendy.

C+

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