Sierra Hurtt has been surrounded by music her entire life. Her father, Phil, is an award-winning writer/producer, so as a young child it wasn’t something she could easily avoid. By the age of three she was already teaching herself how to play the piano and was being recorded at age four. Still she tried to avoid the family business as she grew older and leaned towards acting instead.
Eventually Hurtt gravitated back to music. After a few efforts involving both friends and family, she went into the studio in January of this year to complete her solo debut. With the help of her many connections and the scene that Philadelphia has to offer, Sierra wrote and produced her six-track EP, 8 or 80.
Over these six songs Hurtt clearly tries to display her range, which is rather wide, but the EP loses some sense of flow because of it. These things are expected from an emerging artist of course. Why wouldn’t you want to show off your versatility?
8 or 80, opens with “Solace”, a song in the vein of Sia, and then moves on to a couple more soulful tunes, “Letting Go” and “Rooftops”, the latter being the single. These couple of songs sounds more like Tracy Chapman or India Arie, which I would prefer for Sierra. She doesn’t seem to need a lot of production. Her more basic tracks seem to showcase her best.
The fourth song, “Butterflies” is a good example of Hurtt trying to do too much; At times it seems you lose her amidst everything going on around her, while “Circles”, immediately after it, again goes back to basics. The album closes with “Alchemy”, which shows Hurtt at her best vocally over a string arrangement, but something in cadence makes it a little awkward. It seems like a song that Sierra should flourish in, but she ends up being a little off the mark.
Over the six tracks of 8 or 80, Sierra Hurtt clearly shows she is an artist with a wide range of ability. She seems to want the world to know that she is capable of writing songs that can take her down numerous paths. Sierra shouldn’t have any problem leading us down many of them in due time, but it seems that focusing one collection at a time would be to her benefit. Still it is a fine debut from a talented young musician.
Kevin Kozel-MuzikReviews.com Staff
June 29, 2009
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