Amy Speace: Land Like a Bird

Amy Speace has such a lovely voice. It’s a shame that her songs aren’t more interesting. Land Like A Bird‘s opener “Drive All Night” is repetitive and dull, and so are any number of tunes on the album: “Ghost”, “Change For Me” and “Had to Lose” all mistake repetition for intensity. Speace can use her quavering voice to evoke any number of emotions, including wistfulness on “Land Like a Bird” and “Real Love Song”, and wry humor on “It’s Too Late to Call It a Night”.

Unfortunately, that’s not enough. Speace’s voice is subtle and understated, so her way of using it well is to hit the gentle notes, not the Christina Aguilera-style howlers. That is fine, except that a few howlers would help us forget the repetitive dullness of those other songs I mentioned. In their absence, we have a battle between monotony and quiet. Monotony wins.