For once, we’ll break the rules and we will talk about… a man ! It’s difficult to let Justin Nozuka the new figure of the folk soul music pass us by. The debut album “Holly” (named after his mother) of this barely 19-year-old canadian is a real success, people have already fallen under Justin’s spell throughout Canada and Europe. Endowed with an astonishingly mature, strong and intense voice, he’s one of the few artists who are able to touch people just with the simplicity and sensibility of their voices.
Justin Nozuka may be young but the lyrics of his songs are profound and deal with passions of life, violence (domestic abuse in Save Him), death (Down in a Cold Dirty Well) and of course love (Supposed to Grow Old). In fact I can’t be really objective regarding this review because I am personally a huge fan of this artist, but you can’t deny that his talent is more than obvious…

We have to admit that Tristan Prettyman has matured ! After her smooth, acoustic and timid debut album “Twentythree”, here’s the second record “Hello” released on April 15, 2008, marked by the discovery of new genres but still in the “Prettyman mold” (we find many songs that are quite similar to the previous album: “Madly”, “God Gave Me Reason” or “Hello”).

Indeed, spending several months travelling the USA opened her mind to new music styles and she was quite right to take advantage of it. We discover through this album a fragile and bluesy voice which gained confidence, accuracy and power, enhanced by musical instruments that weren’t present on the previous record, we can hear piano, electric guitars and drums. We can also notice very definite influences such as John Butler Trio (“California Girl”) or the Australian singer Missy Higgins ( “Echo” and “You Got Me”).

Tristan Prettyman is definitely not stuck in the gentleness and the shyness and reveals herself being full of confidence and maturity.

Real seeds of sun in the ears, that’s the present Hayley Sales gives us with Sunseed. A first album, charming yet impressive of maturity for a woman this age. Twenty years old and little Hayley is already big.