Artist: Nicky Holland
Album: Nobody’s Girl
Label: Sony Legacy Recordings
Release Date: 7.21.2017
Nicky Holland is a Brit, a classically trained pianist who, on this offering, clearly has some pretty mean and menacing keyboard chops up her sleeve. With Nobody’s Girl, Holland branches out, moving with ease and evident genius from classical to class and beyond.
Holland has a delightfully engaging vocal delivery, melodic and soulful and purposeful throughout. Most of the 13 tracks are self-penned compositions and feature commanding her piano performance and mellow, honeyed voice that carries her storyboard forward effortlessly from track to track. Her take on the wonderful Hal David classic, “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself,” holds more than a hint of the searing versions by two soul-blues greats, Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield, at times, albeit with a mellower, softer pitch that never loses its place or pace.
With such a talented, classically-trained pianist in control, it’s no surprise to find some excellent jazz-infused support and a fully orchestrated sound providing a marvellous melodic, full-on, wrap-around aural experience, full of passion and emotion. This is a late-evening, feet-up, single malt sort of release. No bad thing at almost any time. For me her track “Hatful of Stars” is a genuine stand-out, a reflective and lyrical triumph.
Nobody’s Girl, on Sony Legacy, proves that Nicky Holland has more than a little bit of something for almost everybody.
—Iain Patience
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