Singer/songwriter Haroula Rose tackles some big issues in the five songs on her self-released debut EP Someday, including hopes about the future, speculations about religious faith, and an attempt to persuade a departing lover to stay. But it might be more accurate to say that she encounters these issues rather than that she really confronts them, at least in terms of the musical approach she takes. Over the gentle, folk-pop musical arrangements she conjures with her co-producer Michael Starr, Rose sings in a deliberately becalmed, little-girl voice sometimes reminiscent of Lucy Kaplansky, or, to cite a more popular antecedent, Norah Jones. Does she really want her lover back in "The Leaving Song"? That's what the lyrics state, but in performance, Rose sounds like she really doesn't care that much what happens. Her verbal dead-pan thus leads appropriately into the disc's final song, "Lay Me Down," in which she drifts off to sleep. In lyrical content, Someday may be wide awake, but its performances are lullabies, and that dichotomy seems to be the point.
© William Ruhlmann /TiVo