Portuguese singer/songwriter Ana Free has quickly become somewhat of an internet phenomenon, along with grabbing plenty of media attention with appearances on MTV, RTP, TV1 and SIC.
The songbird has a beautiful voice and a lovely compassion to her lyrics, inspired by love stories, both with happy and sad endings. The acoustic, Latin guitar playing and gentle piano keys behind each song on this EP, Radian, sets a warm feel for her voice to work its magic over, however the beauty and magic is in her voice and the tracks are unfortunately lacking in any real conviction.
Very much a collection of pop songs, which are pleasurable and very easy to listen to but they are not outstanding or different in any way to make the tracks particularly stand out. Instead Ana falls into the easy listening category, her soundtrack is a collection of background songs, rather than an intent and compelling listen. But is that a bad thing?
Questions In My Mind has a nice rhythm to it with soft upbeat percussion and gentle plucked acoustic guitar strings. Her lovely, sweet voice flows over the music wonderfully with backing vocals heightening it in places. This is an upbeat track and the quality of the percussion gives it a pop tinged catchiness that does make it the best track on the EP. Her voice is sincere and emotion filled and her range is quite brilliant. If reviewing Ana solely as a vocal talent, you would have to say she is almost flawless, as a track though, this is upbeat and well put together, but lacking in any great depth or uniqueness.
Chained is another display of fantastic vocal ability and good use of backing vocals. The piano removes the Latin feel from the guitar tracks on the EP and lifts the volume, however the over simple lyrics and simple construction of the track tells the same story. Brilliant vocals, easy to listen to, but unfortunately lacking in the areas which would make it anything other than nice.
Try is more Latin in feel; the steady melody played by the plucked guitar is nice and gentle and certainly has an airy, summery feel to it. Ana’s lyrics are again based around the topic of love, her vocals are again ultimately brilliant, however the over complication of layers, without enough help from backing singers disrupt the vocal flow a little. It is almost a song, which would be better performed as a duet as she struggles to cover the overlaying lines, indeed in Ana’s defence the production does not help this point either.
Playgrounds And Kisses is upbeat again, strummed guitar melodies and gentle piano playing, Ana’s amazing voice and a nice depth at the end of each chorus when the piano deepens and Ana changes her vocal notes. The instrumental section of piano keys and more intricate guitar playing is a welcome break from the now too familiar style of her tracks. She produces more volume and depth with her vocals too later on and actually makes quite a nice pop song with this track, but it still lacks enough conviction to really impress me beyond quoting the quality of her vocals.
Child is a sorrowful love song; she certainly captures the emotion with her sombre vocals and the use of violins in with the backing music of steady percussion and gentle plucked guitar. It ends the EP in very much the way the recording started, nice, vocally faultless, musically faultless, but overall flawed by its too simple nature and lack of depth.
Ana’s voice is incredibly beautiful, there is a real passion to her vocals and she has a fantastic range and ability to alter this to suit the emotion of the song. Each track is very similar and she produces very nice songs which are unfortunately not unique enough to be anything other than nice. But is there anything wrong with that? Ana’s songs do exactly what she wants them to do, they please the listener, they are not too deep and they are relaxed and easy to listen too.
On vocal merits Ana would get top marks, but on the merit of this EP overall it is good, great vocals, ok music and ok lyrics.
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Chained is another display of fantastic vocal ability and good use of backing vocals. The piano removes the Latin feel from the guitar tracks on the EP and lifts the volume, however the over simple lyrics and simple construction of the track tells the same story. Brilliant vocals, easy to listen to, but unfortunately lacking in the areas which would make it anything other than nice.
