Album Review by Jen Snow

September 2000

Tina Vero - In the Waiting (Handmade Muse Records)

Yes, Tina Vero is a girl who plays the guitar. And yes, she plays coffee houses and Village bars and Take Back the Night. And yes, she did live in Demarest. And Tina Vero has a voice and an uncanny talent for writing songs so empassioned that the listener is often left to wonder if her sometimes empowered, sometimes pleading tone is telling a story or praying. Or both.

Folk songs are, in the simplest sense, stories set to music. And the songs on Vero's debut, In the Waiting, seem more specifically to be monologues delivered to the collective "you," the audience that listens and relates to what she says - if not personally, then in that way that we all (as the collective "you") can relate to such personal yet public consciousness. Vero talks with the listener and when she actually says "you," as in "No afterbirth relieves you/No afterthought that seeks you/Living with the demon at your side/Who'll cheat at games like run and hide/He'll turn the lights to greet you/Say you're free until he owns you," in "Live With the Demon," the listener can't help but feel that Vero is implying herself in that collective.

Vero sing songs of life - but not just her life; she narrates stories that could easily be the listener's own. And maybe that's why she embodies the role of folk singer - one who sings for the folk - so well. For she is one of the folk; she just happens to have a guitar and a voice to prove it.

In the Waiting is comprised of these stories, told by Vero, and set to the music of her guitar. She doesn't need additional accompaniment, and thus the few times that backing percussion shows up, one can't help but wish that Vero were standing alone on the stage, unfettered by the excess; Vero's stage presence is audible in her voice. Her album captures part of that "folky" rapport, that sharing that is usually found only in live performance. You can almost hear the stage-life banter that might be between these songs when played live.

Tina Vero is a girl with a voice; and she has a fabulous debut album to prove it.

InsideBeat's Rating: 4 STARS