Hadley Kennary - In Fall

Chicago-bred singer songwriter Hadley Kennary has arrived on the scene with her debut release titled In Fall. The release from the Berklee College of Music student is a refreshing and inviting effort that allows the listening audience to be welcomed in gracefully and experience the full warmth of her beautiful and intricate voice.

We start things off with "Two Little Birds", a stripped down, bare bones effort that features a delicate acoustic guitar pattern that melds in gracefully with the other instrumentation at hand to create a deeply sophisticated track that exposes Hadley's vocals and opens it up for the listening audience to marvel over instantaneously. "Gasoline" has a sort of country feel to it with the instrumentation pumped up substantially in tempo that allows the listener to get a little bit more variety in the process and see what other talents that Hadley has in her arsenal. My favorite track off the album is "I Remember What You Said", a heartfelt and truly inspiring ballad that best encapsulates the style and image that Hadley was trying to convey when she was conjuring up these songs in the studio, and shows a remarkable sense of maturity and self-awareness that is a quality that every up and coming songwriter should possess. "Extract" has a more uptempo, electronic like quality that seems a little bit out of place here along with the other songs, but shows that Hadley is willing to gamble and take a creative risk on this track here.

The second half of the effort starts off with "Tangled" a breezy, enjoyable tune that features Hadley's incredible vocal prowess working its way through the indelible acoustic guitar rhythms to showcase a singer-songwriter currently in her rhythm and finding her voice right here. We get ready to end things here with "Cry of the Flypaper", a toned down and fragile track that begins to usher in the conclusion of the album with a reflective and memorable track that expresses Hadley's innermost thoughts perfectly. The title track ends matters here with a wistful and somber tune that is the perfect track to bring us into the autumn season, and to the conclusion of the album that connects all the dots and summarizes for us musically how we got to this point. I'm totally enthralled with the depth and quality of talent that is constantly pouring out of Berklee College of Music, and how much time and energy that these students expound on crafting and honing their talents into something that is of the highest quality and is probably better than 99% of the stuff currently out on pop radio today. Hadley is definitely one of those talents that has the charisma and stage presence to bring it to the next level, and the fact that she comes from Berklee College of Music makes me proud that I'm from Boston.

To sum it all up, a terrific and promising debut from Hadley Kennary, a truly gifted individual that has all the necessary musical components to take it to the next level and makes terrific use of everything that she has learned musically and put it all forward.

                                                                                                                     Album Score: 4/5

Track Listing:

1. Two Yellow Birds
2. Gasoline
3. Otis
4. I Remember What You Said
5. Extract
6. Storybook Worthy
7. Tangled
8. Lead
9. Cry of the Flypaper
10. In Fall