Search - Mary Karlzen :: Yelling at Mary

It's hard to avoid the echoes of Sheryl Crow and Nanci Griffith in Mary Karlzen's Yelling at Mary. As with Crow and Griffith, Karlzen's reedy soprano and acoustic guitar are backed by folk-rock arrangements on songs which are convincingly personal and irrepressibly melodic. On her major-label debut after two indie releases, though, Karlzen never sounds like an imitator; she seems more like the equal of Crow and Griffith. If you listen closely, in fact, you'll find that Karlzen rocks harder and more infectiously than her better-known colleagues. The album is full of catchy melodies so closely fitted to a pressing rhythm that it's hard to tell one from the other. The result is a fistful of potential hit singles, most notably "Everybody's Sleeping" and "Another Town, Another Place." The first single, however, is the exuberant love song, "I'd Be Lying," which was lifted intact from Karlzen's '93 EP, Hide. --Geoffrey Himes