Francesca Battistelli

You can take the girl to Nashville, but you can’t take New York out of the girl. Sure, Francesca Battistelli is actually ‘from’ Florida, but she was born in New York and still sounds (to these ears) like a northeasterner, in the tradition of Kathy Troccoli or Margaret Becker. According to her MySpace bio, Francesca was “raised by parents immersed in the arts and Broadway.’’ There’s still a bit of Broadway in this young lady’s vocal style, range, and projection; ironically, her stage-worthy delivery becomes both a strength and weakness in this pop music setting.

Pop music certainly is the genre that My Paper Heart fits into – more specifically, Christian pop music, since the lyrics speak mostly about God, and are clearly written from a Christian point of view. Happily, Battistelli’s full-length debut avoids the ‘bubble gum’ sound and the ‘female fronted metal band’ sound that seem to be the current trends in pop CCM. Instead, My Paper Heart has a sound that owes much to the kind of classic pop/rock that her parents probably listened to. Right from the first notes of the unfortunately-named “Free To Be Me,” the hook-laden pop song gives us a nice ‘real band’ sound, featuring thick drums, solid bass, guitar, piano and what sounds like a Hammond B3 organ – as if the players just walked out of the (Amy Grant) Lead Me On sessions and into the studio to record this album.

The project’s title song is the first place where the album deviates from standard CCM fare and allows the singer to strut her vocal stuff in a funkier context, causing the ears to perk up just when a little perking up was needed. Two tracks later, “Blue Sky” once again breaks from the standard CCM mold with its airy, soulful, jazz-influenced sound. Francesca switches to Sara Groves mode on “Behind the Scenes,” which strongly evokes Ms. Groves’ style with a bit of Nichole Nordeman thrown in. There are lyrical and musical clichés, but there are also fresh moments, like the title track and the catchy “It’s Your Life.” The powerful album closer – “Time In Between,” is a powerfully done ballad and contains the project’s best written lyrics.

Francesca Battistelli obviously has the vocal chops to summon up exactly what a producer wants to hear in the studio. She has a good range and is able to use her deeper register, with a tight stylized vibrato in her phrasing, to affect a more contemporary sound, while her upper register can allow her to soar a bit and evoke a more emotional style, well suited to powerful ballads. There’s perhaps a tendency to sound too adaptable – maybe it’s that Broadway thing – to the point where the human touch seems to be missing: there doesn’t seem to be enough of a vulnerability factor here. Vulnerability, and the ability to touch an audience as an artist (as opposed to as an entertainer), sometimes only comes with time and experience.

My Paper Heart hits all of the marks that it’s supposed to, and is a good, if predictable, collection of up-tempo pop songs with a few ballads mixed in. All of the songs have a real beginning, middle and end, and avoid using repetitive riffs, synths, and beat boxes in favor of traditional songwriting. For the most part, this succeeds at being a strong Christian pop album that will appeal to the wide audience somewhere between the ‘indie’ crowd and the Adult / Contemporary audience. That being said though, this is an album which totally works on paper, but could use a bit more heart.

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