'Blank Canvas' by Sarah Elizabeth Charles
No one can accuse Sarah Elizabeth Charles of a lack of ambition. The jazz chanteuse has long brushed against the edgier side of fusion, but with her fourth official studio album, Blank Canvas, she makes a leap, one perhaps beyond discernable genre. How else to describe an interweaving of lyrical viewpoint and production that intersects a social conscience informed by Nina Simone and Janelle Monae’s skeptical futurism with an ethereality Kate Bush could appreciate and the streetwise earth mother encouragement of Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill?
There’s plenty to admire in Charles’ aesthetic, and Canvas’ 11 tracks she occasionally hits upon sentiments and melodic hooks that could welcome her to the adult R&B and smooth jazz fusion radio formats on which it could be argued she has long deserved a place.
