Look

1	Trying to Love You 3:36
2	Right Back into the Feeling 3:53
3	Look 4:18
4	Free 3:53
5	Touch My Heart 4:05
6	Time Won't Tell 4:05
7	Will & Liz 4:37
8	Who We Are 4:51
9	Your Love Stays 3:07
10	The Reason 4:17
11	I Find Your Love 2:44

Barnes & Noble

Torch song and piano ballad fans who are not averse to the occasional cry in their beer should look closely at Look, the genre-crossing new release from Nashville singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman. If some songs seem reminiscent of the work of Emmy Lou Harris, Trisha Yearwood, and/or Bonnie Raitt, it’s probably because Chapman has written for them all, along with many notable others. However, Chapman boasts some serious pipes of her own: a gorgeous alto not afraid to reach for the big notes at the upper end of her range, where her voice wavers as fetchingly as moonlight on water. Nowhere is this better showcased then in those songs featuring sensuous melodies and sophisticated modulations that hark back to American Songbook standards. One can just picture Rogers and Astaire gliding across a ballroom floor to the title song, co-written with jazz great Andy Bey, or what seems like its sequel, "Touch My Heart.” Michael McDonald wraps his sinuous vocals around Chapman's on "Time Won't Tell,” a heartthrob of a song Chapman co-wrote with prolific country genius Harlan Howard. Yet another standout is Chapman’s duet with her son, Ernest Chapman III, on “Your Love Stays,” a simple but charming country ballad that evokes the folk revival repertoire of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Eleven songs strong, here’s a connoisseur’s collection of instant classics that sounds at once familiar and fresh. Lissa Kiernan

All Music Guide

Look is the album Beth Nielsen Chapman was working on when she released Hymns (part of her long-term project documenting the world's religious music). One of her finest qualities as an artist is that you can see exactly where she's at in each album. Unlike most songwriters, she makes no attempt to mask or detach herself from her own life in her work. Look is a collection of solidly constructed, emotionally taut love songs that examines a relationship from its initial attraction to its full fruition to its dissolution and back again. And while these are deeply romantic tunes, they are far from giddy or sentimental. Chapman co-produced Look with Peter Collins, and Annie Roboff. She collaborated with a group of fine songwriters, too, including Harlan Howard, Eric Kaz, Roboff, Patrick Doyle, Bill Lloyd, David Wilcox, and even Andy Bey. It's a big, wide-open record that rings even in its quietest moments. It sounds more like Franklin, Tennessee than Nashville. These 11 songs run the gamut from the spare pop balladry of the opener "Trying to Love You" -- an awesome testament to the graininess of love's stages in the everyday life of a committed couple -- to the finger-popping R&B of "Right Back Into the Feeling" that celebrates the fun in passion. It's one of two tracks on which Michael McDonald contributes backing vocals. "Free," written with Roboff, is a rhythm-driven rocker as testament to personal liberation with an African backbeat. "Time Won't Tell," written with Howard, is an honest to goodness country song, and it's one of the collection's stellar tracks. A broken love song, Chapman's water-like vocal is backed by a lilting pedal steel, and open, reedy acoustic guitars, John Catchings' cello and McDonald's backing vocal. They help crack open the emotion from the song's core and bring it to the fore, letting it fall freely. Look is another leap forward in aesthetic excellence for a diverse, savvy songwriter who never flinches in exposing the vulnerable, the dark, and the difficult while never giving into them, instead surrounding them with streams of light and a wonderful ability to share these things with consummate craft and accessibility. Look is full of grace and mystery. Thom Jurek