REVIEW: Rebekah, Remember to Breathe (Elektra)
- Jon Steltenpohl
In their great race to beat a genre into the ground, the music industry has been signing up every promising bit of female talent they can get their hands on. Blame it on Sarah McLachlan or Sheryl Crow or Melissa Etheridge, but you can't get away from the newest breed of woman pop stars with a little folk, a little alternative, and a little rock thrown in. Rebekah represents the latest offering from Elektra, and she embodies a disturbing legacy of musical cradle robbing.
Before reaching her current tender age of 25, Rebekah first flirted with engineering school, art school, and acting before find her true love of playing pop music. Her parents were in charge of the church choir, but Rebekah's style doesn't have much in common with Christian contemporary or Gospel. Instead, she's a pop/rock musician taking off the gloves to give Jewel and Paula Cole little jabs and left hooks. Regretfully, you can see where she's aiming, but Rebekah never lands the knockout punch.
"Sin So Well", the first single from Remember to Breathe has already garnered airplay on some radio stations. It captures perfectly everything that's masterful and mediocre with this promising debut. For the first 24 seconds, "Sin So Well" is the best pop song you've ever heard. A punky little guitar starts out the beat. Rebekah puts on a little girl voice and sings, "Momma doesn't like when I sin so well / heaven's kind of far / but I swear that when I'm coming it's close / 'cause we sin so well / lead us not into temptation / oh, but what a way to go."
And then, she launches into this horrible verse of wailing souls cast into the depths of hell. Rebekah's voice strains and power chords and cymbals rip the wicked for their sins. Seconds later, you're back to pure pop candy. There's even a bridge with strings thrown in for good measure plus a full minute at the end that repeats the opening. The end result is a jumbled song with just enough catchy points to keep you hooked. It's something that shows potential for more, but seems unpolished. Unfortunately, most of the songs on the album are like this. There's enough there to like, but not enough to commit yourself.
Two notable exceptions stand out as unique and not produced for the radio world. "Pining" is a song of melancholy desire that features only piano and string quartet. Rebekah's voice is reserved and focused. She aches in just the right places, and the accompaniment is sparse and sad. The chords of the strings just sing. "Cardboard Boxes" takes on a completely different genre. Funky and fun, it's got wakka-wakka guitars and raspberry horns. Rebekah is loose and smooth, and she seems right at home with a chorus of "doo, doo-doo, doo, doo"'s. These two songs along with "Keep It A Secret", "Be Your Own", and "Little Black Girl" reveal a great talent in the making.
While Remember to Breathe doesn't consistently satisfy, it's not Rebekah's fault. She's got a lot of talent, but Elektra signed her too early. Bits and pieces of her songs stick in your head all day, and, on the whole, Remember to Breathe is pretty good rookie effort. But, it doesn't come together like a more experienced artist's album would. A few more songs in her songbook and a few more years on the road will mature Rebekah into the musician she's capable of being.
(Visit http://www.elektra.com/rock_club/rebekah/rebekah.html for a bio and 3 song samples.)
