La Huerta

Five years ago, American singer-songwriter Tori Sparks moved from Nashville to Barcelona. She took with her a guitar and a voice that melds Crystal Gayle's country cool with Yasmin Levy's halting breathlessness. As La Huerta demonstrates, this proved a handy mix for tuning into Spain's mestizo music scene, where rumba, flamenco, pop, rock and blues mix freely. Sparks also likes to channel Led Zeppelin, both in her freeform Robert Plant-ish vocals and in rude blasts of electric guitar. Think Rodrigo y Gabriela, grown up, with better amps, and you're near. The album has some quirks. On ‘La Leyenda del Tiempo’ Sparks sings in Spanish and does so with feeling and fluency. She opens with a flamenco-flavoured cover of Nat King Cole's ‘Nature Boy.’ But her emotion is genuine and affecting, Pepe Camacho's flamenco guitar is superlative and the arrangements daring. A huerta is an orchard, semi-wild and fecund, with a few weeds. There's something vital and ambitious about this album, raising it well above the realm of an American ex-pat's musical postcard. Intriguing, impassioned, occasionally inspired, LaHuerta is a fresh plant in the Catalonian musical garden.