Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The overwhelming sense of openness, of regret and vulnerability filters itself out from the stereo and plays heartbreakingly into the exposed space that is created by Gina Villalobos. The slight touch of guitar, never far the soul, asks many questions of what it is to be truly allow yourself to feel pain, loss and rejection, the rationality of self-understanding and the clarity and prerequisite of being human.

Sola is Gina Villalobos’ first album in five years and yet the sound of a heart-broken guitar still manages to carry through the beauty of a mournful repose that has come to be loved with her back catalogue. The inspired poetic resonance, which exemplifies the human spirit through its good times and carries it when life becomes attached to the undying melancholic, is sentimentally expressive.

Country-Rock has many heroes; however none so much really get beneath the skin of the state of mind as much as Ms. Villalobos does; the feminine hunger replaced with the urge to find a cause to defend, even it is reflecting on the insanity of every situation. The impulse she reflects upon is one that few really get to see, the need for drive replaced with thought and it is deliberate contemplation and rest that has made Sola into an album which you turn on, play for a while and understand more of what it means to have so much creativity coursing through your veins and then seeing it turned off infront of you. However, the creative spark, no matter how far badly hurt or buried deep into the well of seclusion, never gives up, the animal always rises eventually.

The taste of the enigmatic lingers through Sola, and despite its scenic and exquisite melancholy guitar, the voice of Gina Villalobos soars high and takes the listener’s hand and drags the soul through clouds of astonishing lyrical value.

The songs Come Undone (Interstate Ache) and Walk Away typify the ache that sits, almost resplendently, in the small of the stomach. The bitterness of loss something everybody can at least identify with, lingers for a while and then gallops through the mind with vigour. The tone of each song is a rich tapestry waiting to be seen, to have the light of a new day shine brightly upon it and give life, to give the creative urge, another reason to be.

Ian D. Hall