Sarah Darling
WINTER WONDERLAND
Self released
Clearly a rising star, Sarah Darling has built up a significant fan base in the UK with her gentle style of country music and her three albums have all been well received. Her single ‘Home to Me’ spawned moderate success in the US country charts and now she’s decided to indulge herself with a Christmas album. She is blessed with sublime vocals and the production can’t be faulted with Micah Hulscher’s piano prominent throughout. At the end of the day though, WINTER WONDERLAND is just another Christmas album; and it’s pure easy listening, not country. Songs like ‘White Christmas’, Silent Night’, ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’, Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ are beautifully delivered but only encourage comparison with the plethora of similar offerings which inevitably appear over and over again at this festive time of year. No doubt her UK fans will have snapped up copies of the album during her recent tour and they would not have been disappointed. The album would make excellent background music whilst tucking into the turkey and plum pudding but then so would many, many others. John Roffey
www.sarahdarling.com