Rebekah Higgs

Rebekah Higgs is talented, and she seems to know her stuff — she hops from one stylistic template to another, demonstrating a full understanding of various genres from country rock to ’80s alternative. Her songs, however, could benefit from choruses. One verse repeats for minutes at a time, then gives way to another verse that repeats for minutes at a time, and so on, so forth. The flow is interrupted by a shoegazer-influenced instrumental breakdown which would have been more appropriate had Higgs broken it up and planted bits of it throughout the songs themselves — as it stands, it seems like a strange digression. The record is neither James Blunt-intolerable nor completely devoid of personality, but it is a little bland. The songs are nicely ornamented and Higgs’s abilities shine through, but it sounds as though she’s just finished learning the idiom — now she can afford to take some liberties. The repetitiveness could work in her favour if she made it seem intentional; it’s not clear what sort of identity she wants to claim for herself. If she distinguished her style a little more, however, she’d have something going on.