The news on this, perhaps, is that chanteuse
Rim Banna hails from Palestine. Her passions may be political -- the CD is dedicated to Palestinian and Arab detainees -- but you'd be hard-pressed to know it from the music. She has a lovely voice, admittedly, but the songs seem to float rather than have substance, and the backing is generally quite anonymous -- it's hard to root this to any specific place. It's hard to doubt her sincerity, and things improve on the traditional material, but overall it's an album that manages to seem less than the sum of its parts. ~ Chris Nickson