Daughter of the Spring

Reviewing Mor Karbasi's debut CD, it was tempting to compare her with Yasmin Levy, a fellow Jerusalemborn Sephardic singer. It is not so easy this time. With her velvet vibrato and flamenco decorations, she is an all-too-obvious challenger for the crown of Sephardic song princess 2011. The voice is certainly as appealing as before but her material is another matter. The Beauty and the Sea was an eclectic mix of traditional Judaeo-Spanish standards with her own compositions. On Daughter of the Spring, with two exceptions, she has composed every number herself, sometimes in collaboration with her producer and guitarist Joe Taylor.

The result is more commercial, more selfconscious and often more over-produced. The importunate piano is particularly irritating, the squelchy violins in some numbers are a definite misjudgement and so is the contrived, sensual over-proximity to the microphone. The most successful track is ‘Dezile a mi Amor’, which has traditional Sephardic origins, and which encourages her to stretch her flamenco inflections to their considerable limits. She remains one of the most gifted new arrivals on the Sephardic scene, but perhaps a different producer would be a wise decision next time.