Miranda Barber has a beautiful voice and a good ear for a catchy melody, but her debut album, Lips' Decision, doesn't fully capitalise on these talents.
Wandering through jazz and blues history, Barber cherry picks the sounds she likes and adapts them to fit her style in a pleasing fashion that produces some lovely musical moments. Sadly, moments are all you get. There's never any feeling of depth, or any sense that Lips' Decision has enough substance to make you return to it again and again. It's the sort of album that gets played at a polite dinner party and then is never heard from again.
There is a niche audience for this sort of thing, and Lips' Decision will make them very happy, but it doesn't have the strength to step out of that niche.
You can hear our fuill review over at The Leisure Lab.