Sydney Alese - Time

Sydney Alese

​Time
self-released; 2015

3.4 out of 5

By Ted Rogen

Hailing From Mesa, Arizona, SydneyAlese is a singer/songwriter who just released her debut album entitled Time. I started off listening to “Time” and thought I was in for a electronic based pop album but as it progressed I quickly realized that she had no intention of sticking to that style. Time is an album made of disparate genres and is only held together by the sound of her voice.

She jumps from genre to genre and most of the songs completely hold up on their own. I was impressed by the songwriting, production and her vocals. That being said she hasn’t yet found “her” sound. The x-factor I’m talking about is that thing that makes you recognize a band the first time you hear a song. If you think of bands like Radiohead, The Strokes or really most successful acts you can almost conjure up their sound in your head. 

After the title track, “Light My World” displays some intimacy. The song has a nice mix of melancholy and hope. She sounds good when her vocals are subdued and the percussion works very well in this track. “Pass You By” reminded me of a pop song you might hear from Avril Lavigne while “Inspire” veers towards country pop.

The next song “Love in the Night” is a straight up club thumper that comes close to sounding like Jennifer Lopez. “The Beautiful Truth” is a single worthy pop song that is extremely catchy any way you look at it. She indulges in more club-worthy songs with “Prisoner.” I thought the production was solid even if it followed a lot of the tropes you would hear from a dance song.

I felt as if SydneyAlese is chasing for a hit on this album. There is nothing wrong with that but you can kind of feel it. At the end of the day I think she might benefit from having a more parochial understanding of what type of music she wants to make. In the long run I think it might be more beneficial in reaching the wide demographic of people she is hoping to reach.

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