Michelle Lewis - Little Leviathan (1998)

Here we go again. Add Michelle Lewis to the long, tired list of female singer/songwriters with acceptable vocal skills and passively interesting lyrical content. Her voice is similar to Juliana Hatfield's, with a little Meredith Brooks swimming around in the lower register. The most this album can offer is Friday-night background music for college freshman girls casually perfecting their pop vibrato in the forgiving acoustics of a dormitory bathroom. Little Leviathan is a girl-power brown-out at best. But this isn't a reason to condemn the album. The reason this album is condemnable is that Lewis is no street-urchin musical newbie. She's the daughter of saxophonist Morty Lewis. She has reasonably impressive songwriting credentials and associations with well-known musicians. She was smart enough to enlist Steve Fisk as producer for this record. And although the album is indeed perfectly produced, entirely inoffensive, and even pleasing, at this stage of the game, there is just no reason in the world to make another album of this type after Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Paula Cole, Sarah McLachlan, Joan Osborne, Tracy Bonham, Melissa Etheridge, and all the others have been there and done that to death. --Beth Bessmer