What if
Jason Mraz and
John Mayer were trapped inside the body of a twenty-something girl with a voice that alternately sounds like
Rickie Lee Jones,
Macy Gray, and
Edie Brickell? Well, somewhere amidst that goulash of influences emerges
Daphne Willis, a Chicago-based singer and songwriter whose first full-length album,
What to Say, is the work of a musician with a bit more talent than focus.
Willis' songs are a little on the wordy side, but the easy conversational tone of her lyrics makes them sound significantly better than they read, and she pulls off the R&B influences of her vocals surprisingly well for a gal who was playing the occasional coffee shop gig only a year or so before this was recorded (and
Willis has thankfully avoided picking up the wildly melismatic style that's so common in contemporary pop and R&B). But while
Willis is good at what she does, she isn't great, at least not yet -- much of
What to Say sounds like the work of a young musician who is still sorting out all the rudiments of her style (no great shame given that she was only 22 when she finished the album), and while tracks like "Love and Hate" lean toward the simple, acoustic-driven arrangements of her debut EP and show her to her best advantage, most of the songs have been given a splashier, horn-driven sound that tends to weigh her down a bit, and while she carries the burden with an admirable grace, every once in a while, she sounds as if she's gotten a bit lost on her own album.
What to Say proves that
Daphne Willis has a solid idea of how to write and how to sing; making a record is the next art she needs to master, though it's not hard to imagine she'll manage that with a little more experience. ~ Mark Deming