CD Reviews

Kate Walsh

Tim's House | Verve Forecast

By MIKAEL WOOD | January 28, 2008

2.5 Stars

This young Brighton-based singer-songwriter isn’t Kate Nash, the ascendant heir to Lily Allen’s sass-pop throne, and neither is she the American Grey’s Anatomy star with whom she shares a name. So who is Kate Walsh? A sensitive soul with a broken heart and an acoustic guitar — no chance of confusing her with anyone else, right!? To be sure, the strength of Walsh’s sophomore set does not lie in stunning originality: out since last summer in the UK, where it burned up download charts after the then-unsigned singer submitted “Talk of the Town” to iTunes, the album offers the same brand of pretty sad-girl melancholy that Starbucks customers have been swimming in since Norah Jones’s breakout five years ago. What makes Tim’s House worth hearing is the particularly guileless quality of Walsh’s voice. If you thought Markéta Irglová sounded like an open book in Once, get a load of the way Walsh lays bare the disappointment that sets in after the drama of any break-up dies.

Topics: CD Reviews , Norah Jones, Kate Nash, Kate Walsh, More

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