Superstition Highway

Album Review

On Sanctuary, the second album by folk-pop duo Gypsy Soul, singer/lyricist Cilette Swann devoted most of her words to intimate issues of love, although she did at one point address herself to her heavenly father. The group followed with a reverent Christmas album, Sacred, and on Superstition Highway, their fourth album overall, Swann has largely moved on from matters of interpersonal romance to spiritual concerns. She begins with "Who?," a song full of questions about her place in the world, and goes on to muse philosophically in most of the new songs for which she provides lyrics. Unfortunately, her tendency to lapse into cliché, evident in her earlier songs, is still prevalent here. "We are the sum of the choices we make," "the reward is in the learning," "it's not what you take but what you leave behind," these are the kind of words of wisdom with which she sprinkles her songs, along with frequent mentions of faith. This turn toward the ephemeral, along with her musical partner Roman Morykit's musical arrangements, featuring multiple guitar textures and sampled percussion, turn Gypsy Soul's music decisively toward the new age genre. And even as the disc adopts universal concerns, this is one of the slighter titles in the group's catalog, boasting only six new original songs out of 11 selections, along with two instrumentals, a remake of "Crying Colours" from Sanctuary, and two covers, the folk standard "Scarborough Fair" and the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin," the lyrics of which ("Just what the truth is/I can't say anymore") are perfectly in keeping with the rest of the album's tone.