The Big Number

Album Review

In 1998, the Alice Project's recording career was off to a promising start with The Big Number, which showed band leader Alice Leon to be an expressive, highly appealing singer/songwriter along the lines of Sheryl Crow and Edie Brickell. Leon, who produced and arranged this excellent CD with Alice Project keyboardist Scott Monetti, brings a great deal of warmth and vulnerability to personal-sounding pop/rock offerings like "Bob," "All That I Wanted," "Knight in Shining Armor," and "Goodbye Old Friend (The Shaka Song)." But for all of her vulnerability and introspection, Leon never comes across as wimpy or waifish. The Princeton, NJ, resident isn't afraid to let her sensitivity show, but unlike some of the singer/songwriters who emerged in the '90s, she never sounds whiny and refuses to drown the listener in self-pity. Anyone who has spent a lot of time listening to Crow, Brickell, or Carole King should make a point of hearing The Big Number.