After her seventh album Blistering Sun just barely missed a recommendation, the question is raised as to whether the same will be the case with her current work "Chandelier". This up-and-coming artist doesn't want to let herself be pigeonholed into just *one* category.

Again the long list of musicians accompanying her sticks out, who she now lists in a wonderfully designed Digipack booklet. Dave Eggar, the album's signature cellist, takes over the Julia Kent role from the previous record. In addition to the drummer Dean Sharp and Russ Johnson (Trumpet), he appears to belong to a strong core of musicians. Before the subsequent artists "WITH" is printed in big, bold letters.

A further difference is the fact that Sage's songs, again all self-composed with the exception of "Mexico", lack the jazzy type of playing that was so highly praised on "The Blistering Sun".

Just one relic remains: only in "Site-Seeing", an exceptional track on the album, does Johnson let his trumpet sound jazzy. Apart from that he forms a horn section with Michael Amendola and Alan Ferber that adds a nice touch of pizzazz to the compositions "Angel In My View" and "Moonlight & Fireflies".

For the cover song "Mexico" Sage takes her place at the harmonium for the first time. The relaxed atmosphere of the track is shot through with a fairly serious rocking guitar played by Ben Butler. Excellently arranged, this track and the harmonium are the salt in the soup here.

In comparision to the previous album, the New Yorker has given more of a say to her four guitarists. Naturally these don't dominate "Chandelier", but the instrument is very well mixed into the foreground on several tracks.

On a huge number of albums, consistency is emphasized as a positive. Rachael Sage's newest work is consistent. But this point, again in counterpart to "The Blistering Sun" doesn't exactly work in its favor.

There is an interesting story behind the song "Blue Light". During her days as a DJ at Stanford University, she played piano on Fridays in her dormitory, where John Lee Hooker's piano player heard her. He invited her to a barbecue and told her she should bring her tape recorder so she could interview Hooker. They played together there, and that was not her only visit. The song is about the friendship that developed between her and Hooker. If you think that Sage has put her entire relationship with Hooker into words packed into a simple 12-bar song, you're thinking wrong. She does it not with blues, but with Rob Curto's accordion. "Blue Light" is one of the uptempo numbers on the album. Adam Levy's guitar sounds as though he played it partly with a bottleneck slide.

Also new here is the first instrumental by Rachael Sage, entitled "Beloved". This is a magnificent piece of music, that displays almost classical leanings with the strings, and in an almost jaunty section Curto plays a great accordion part.

But I keep getting stuck on both "Mexico" and "Site-Seeing".

Not all of "Chandelier"'s bulbs burn brightly. Still the American's current CD is above average, and gets 7 out of 10 stars.