Heather Greene - Five Dollar Dress

After a somewhat uncertain and dislocated beginning, Five Dollar Dress - the début album by New Yorker Helen Greene - dangerously waits until its third song I Wrote Your Name to come into its own, only then settling the listener for what is to follow. The song’s carefully arranged strings and delicate slide guitar touches combine with Green’s soft yet throaty vocal, hidden until this point but developing here dramatically with a clearer and more assured melody. She sounds very like Norah Jones but updates her lounge-jazz style with the quirkier touches of keyboard bossa nova beats and reversed guitar loops. Greene herself ascertains that Five Dollar Dress isn’t in fact a serious album, however a more earnest tone is definitely construed through the naked piano & voice duet of 1000 Lights. Perhaps if Greene had taken a similarly realist, at times unromantic approach musically, as she has lyrically throughout this album, it could have covered more uncharted territory. [Emma Smith]