This is Eva Cassidy's one and only solo studio album. Before her untimely death in 1996 she made a live album (Live At Blues Alley) and a duet album with Chuck Brown (The Other Side), and these, together with the posthumous compilation Songbird, represent the sum total of her output. Every album, every track is therefore doubly precious. For Eva Cassidy's voice is of the very rarest hue: the kind of voice that only comes along once in a generation, the kind of voice that grabs your heartstrings and just won't let go. Whether she is singing blues and jazz numbers, evergreen standards or folk ballads, her vocal expression, her range, note-perfect accuracy and sense of passionate immersion in the music are all palpable. If there's a problem it's that she is so supremely confident an interpreter of all these styles that the album lacks a single focus: Fleetwood Mac's touching ballad "Songbird" is bookended by the Arlen/Mercer standard "Blues In The Night" (a swinging blues) and "Need Your Love So Bad" (a duet with jazzman Chuck Brown). Sometimes Eva is Aretha Franklin, sometimes she's Sandy Denny. But it scarcely matters for anyone captivated by her voice. And anyone who listens to this album is certain to be captivated. --Mark Walker