SARAH PIERCE, Love's The Only Way, Little Bear/IRD
There’s so much stuff we already know of in this new album by Sarah Pierce (at least for us who are following pop music evolution since a long time). Here we have delicate songs in the trails of mainstream folk and country rock, both musical genres that had a lot of imitators in the last few decades. But the difference here is done by a delicious singing and a lovely mix of piano and guitars arrangements. There’s always something to deliver you a nice surprise while you’re listening to this album. Sarah Pierce is a contemporary singer/songwriter but she has the same problems of many collegues of her generation who are deeply rooted in tradition: their problem seems to be to find an audience for a 90 minutes show and convince it to buy records. Born in Illinois, she lived also in California, where she worked hard on her music and inspiration to free them from the ties of traditional country music. Now she’s based in Austin, where she took a big step forward and built herself a strong reputation as a powerful and hard working performer. This girl has a strong personality, and also a very focused taste for harmonies, a great talent in writing ballads (My Kinda Day) and she’s so good at using West Coast “musical colors” (listen to the title track) with a big help from faithful musicians and friends. She has a very beautiful voice, firm and trained, and she knows how to used it with confidence. Sometimes she’s soft (Some Days), other times is rough and straight (Talk To Me), and sometimes she sails somewhere in between those places where Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon or Shania Twain have already been. A kind of female version of Jackson Browne, if you want, with those lyrics always coming from everyday personal experiences. His husband Merel Bregante (drummer with Loggins & Messina, Chris Hillman, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and many more) has the producion credits, as he did for her previous albums. Artistic Rate: 8 of 10: Sonic Rate: 8 of 10.

—Luigi Lozzi, AUDIO REVIEW, March 2004 - Translation by Marco Grompi