Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I’ll admit it. I was not thrilled with any of Fiona Joy Hawkins’s 10 “chilled” piano stylings. The lengthy opening track on her latest release, simply titled Ice--Piano Slightly Chilled, is a strange cross between pseudo Rock music and Trance with a digeridoo. Cloud Chill, the second Antarctic-like exploration of the piano, made me wonder, ‘Didn’t I already hear this same five-note melody in the first song?’ The only thing missing is the digeridoo. Both tracks lack any sort of musical direction or development. Her Frosted View gives us something a little different to look at, harmonically speaking, but ultimately (and rhythmically) she sticks with what she knows, which unfortunately seems to be very little. 

It’s not all bad, though. Hawkins’s Antarctic Wings provides a surprisingly nice departure from the rest of the album’s mundane, unrelenting sound. It’s lighter, and though she keeps repeating her melody, somehow it works for this track. Love in the Refrigerator (that’s right) is another track that somehow works with this genre. However, by the time Winter rolls around, we’re plunged back into the world of scary, dark, redundant melodies. This time, there are hollow vocals to guide us through the Winter Cold.

Thankfully, Hawkins does something a little different on Frozen Rose: she includes a saxophone, which adds a smooth jazz feel to the album and provides yet another nice (and much needed) break from the insistent, cyclical melodies that accompany a slightly chilled piano. Actually, this saxophone makes this the standout track on the album. Hawkins pulls out all the stops for the final two songs, Snow Bird and Crystalized Love. Actually, Fiona just adorns her (still repetitious) melodies with similarly repetitious vocal lines.

I will say this: to her credit, Fiona Joy Hawkins wrote every track on the album; on the other hand, every track sounds almost identical to the one that preceded it. I suppose the upside of this is that you can’t really tell one track from another, so you might not realize that you’ve just listened to 10 songs that pretty much all sound alike, but happy listening just the same!