NOT since that lumpy northern student from Gomez with the venerable New Orleans blues roar has a voice so belied initial expectations.
Amy Winehouse smoulders like a Forties' jazz diva, a Dinah Washington or Sarah Vaughan. In fact she is a 19-year-old London city girl sent packing from the Sylvia Young stage school for "not applying herself" and piercing her nose. Ultimately what impresses is not her Little Voice-like ability to soak up her father's record collection in her Camden bedroom, but the insidious way she applies her soulful, sibilant voice to the hip-hop beats and slow-burning balladry of today.
Squeeze the lemon of her itchy, bitchy, man-shredding lyrics over that urban soundscape and this sly, early-hours record brings a noir sophistication to girl power.
Updated: 11:35 Thursday, November 06, 2003
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