August 2003

say, a late introduction is better than none at all, and this is certainly the case with this very pleasant album. Serah is a singer songwriter falling somewhere [vocally] between Bonnie Raitt and Kim Carnes. Musically, she's all over the place, with strong influences of blues, country, folk, jazz, new age, rock and African running through most tracks. The resultant mix is quite striking and one wonders why she isn't better known in the UK [this is her seventh album]. Late Harvest would find a ready home on BBC Radio 2, with its audience of grown up pop/rock fans.

The thirteen tracks cover quite a range of aspects of life, and consist of a mix of strong original songs written by Serah and some extremely well done covers of "Stand By Me," "Sailing" [the Christopher Cross song] and "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow." I can't really comment on the quality of Serah's lyrics as I'm not much for the words, I prefer listening to the voice as an instrument, and I can tell you that this lady has a fine set of pipes, both accessible and intimate at the same time. The world music sounds are quite subtly used, with the fine African percussionist Wasis Diop adding splashes of colour where appropriate. Indeed, the musicianship on this album is very high, very smooth but full of vitality. Serah may be classed as a 'new age' artist, but I thinkshe transcends that classification by far.

I'm not sure who is distributing this album in the UK but you can order it from Serah's own website at www.serah.com, where you can also check out her previous albums as well.