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Volume 72, Issue 61,
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Life & Arts Mozella gets romantic without any of the sap by ZACH LEE
Mozella's jazzily raspy voice draws easy comparisons to Norah Jones, but the 24-year-old Detroit-born singer-songwriter (real name Mozella McDonald) is more than a carbon copy of Jones. On her debut album, I Will, she vacillates from poppy soulfulness to heartfelt confession, and whispers of artists that run the gamut from Macy Gray to Everlast can be heard influencing her vocal waverings. And underneath that flexible voice, Mozella demonstrates an ability to write about love and loneliness with a certain tenderness that not only reveals her own vulnerabilities but reassures listeners in theirs. I Will is steeped in drum loops, and though the result is a laid-back, hip-hop-inspired groove that Mozella is more than comfortable in, the programmed beats take away from the jazzy coffeehouse aroma that curls around her voice. The melancholic keys of "You Wanted It" open up the album with a calmly sorrowful look at love that faded away, and it is foiled nicely by the optimistic dreaminess of "Love is Something," a song that at times feels like a Lauryn Hill/Gwen Stefani collaboration but at other times seems hastily crafted. "Killing Time" is so full of Everlast's lyrical patterns and subject matter that if Mozella's voice were an octave deeper, it would be hard to think someone other than Whitey Ford himself was in the booth. "What to Say" has the feel of a 1940s Caribbean club,
and Mozella's voice dances seductively around a difficult lover before
she gives him an ultimatum and says "If you want to leave, leave."
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