Maggie Sayles comes from Portland, Oregon. Most of the time, she works as a multimedia producer, but she has a real passion in her life: the songwriting. Her album entitled “Trust” has just been released. Maggie presents on it 9 songs, which make me think of a good rock playing, similar to the works of Bob Dylan, Gordon Haskell or Bruce Springsteen.
Maggie has an interesting voice, which arouses associations with Kate Bush. Although she doesn’t sing in a theatrical manner as Kate, after cautious listening to Maggie’s compositions it seems that both ladies have the similar timbre of voices. What’s important, fortunately Maggie’s music can’t be classed as sweet female pop music for teenagers. Her songs are based on solid rock foundation. Maggie accompanied by the group of invited musicians performs all of them. Richard Rophfus’s (dr) performance is very impressive, Albert Reda’s (bg) work is also stunning (his play in instrumental part of “Only You” make listener nothing else then enchanted), the guitarists’ work is also excellent (apart from Maggie, who play this instrument there are also Tim Ellis, Doug Rowell, Kelly Morrison and Don Thompson delivering extremely nice guitar parts) and in several tracks Maggie is accompanied vocally by Rex McNew (their best duets are in “Please” and “Where”). Maggie weaves elements of other genres into her rock songs very skillfully. The final section of “Love’s Disdain”, with the guitar flamenco part is just charming. “Rock The Cradle” is kind of reggae ballad and it sounds pretty close to the memorable Eric Clapton’s recording “I Shot The Sheriff”. What’s more, there are also elements of blues in a beautiful track entitled “The Key”.
Anyway, on „Trust” CD one can find more such flavors, musical pearls and heart-moving sounds. Wise and not trivial lyrics deserve a separate reference. All in all, they concern the different aspects of love and other feelings connected with it: nostalgia, longing, loneliness, but they also touch taboo subjects such as molesting children (“Rock The Cradle”), the events on Tiananmen square in June 1989 (“I See Red”) or a cruel crime (“Sharp Shooter”). Maggie sings about those touchy subjects in a way, which makes it impossible to be indifferent to them.
To sum up, her work is a good melodic rock with wise lyrics and a thought provoking messages. This is what the “Trust” album is like. Stylistically it is far from conventional art rock, but if we take into account the obvious fact that the music can be good or bad, then Maggie Sayles’s songs definitely belong to the former category.
Translated by: Kachat
