Album Review
St. Albans resident and songwriter Meg Willey has lots of experience directing and performing in local theater productions and, after listening to her new CD, it's no surprise to find out that many of them were musicals. Willey's collection of original compositions is not the singer-songwriter fare you might expect from a 23-year-old; the disc sounds like the soundtrack to her life as a musical. After taking classical voice lessons nearly half her life, she's well equipped to deliver the goods. These 14 songs are concerned with the narrator's relationships and emotions; stocked with dramatic shifts and quirky dynamic changes, they're suitable for a Broadway score and are never dull. Laura Nyro and Carole King influences sparkle here and there. Along with singing up a storm, Willey plays keyboards; she does a good job on the piano, but the synth often sounds so artificial that it detracts from the material. Willey is clearly a talented musician and has put it all out there with Seemingly Collected. It remains to be seen how she'll be received in a world full of guitar-toting and chord-progression-limited singer-songwriters.