Word: debut
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...find out next week, when Anastasia, the winsome, often winning debut film from Fox Animation Studios, arrives on screens nationwide. Directed by Disney renegades Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven), this fanciful story about the lost princess of the Romanovs has all the elements for a cartoon hit: a girl-becomes-a-woman plot; a chipper, Alan Menkenish score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once on This Island, Ragtime); and a cute, chatty bat. Close your ears to the Fox fanfare in the opening moments...
...recent albums by young performers provides part of the answer. There's pop singer Diana King with her new release, Think Like a Girl (Work Group); the hip-hop-charged star Capleton with his album I-Testament (Def Jam); and trip-hop-tinged newcomer Finley Quaye with his debut CD Maverick a Strike (550 Music). A much more established star, South African traditionalist Lucky Dube, also has a new CD out, Taxman (Shanachie). The fact that reggae, like a nation secure enough to welcome new immigrants, is able to nurture such a varied group of up-and-comers...
Finley Quaye's inventive, off-kilter debut, Maverick a Strike, is also bursting with freshness and new life. His music has a sinuous reggae groove twisting through it, but it is laced with folky acoustic guitars and trip-hop electronic doodles and flourishes (he's an uncle of trip-hop maverick Tricky). It's easy for music this arty to forget about heart, but not here; on the song Even After All, Quaye turns in a tender, haunting ballad...
There is something oceanic about the music of singer-songwriter Alana Davis, 23. Her enchanting debut album, Blame It on Me (Elektra), has a pacific calm to it, undulating with soft folk, light jazz and warm R. and B., and yet, beneath the serene surface, one senses a depth, a power, precious things hidden away like sunken treasure ships. In concert one gets more of a glimpse: Davis has a sensuous, sliding alto, young and vibrant, but infused with old, smoky blues. She is a major new talent...
...Lord's eponymous debut, for instance, the wistful effect of songs like "Helsinki" and "He'd Be a Diamond" was enhanced by the simple production values of girl-and-guitar, while "Lights are Changing," the only band-backed song, set the album off to a more invigorating start. In fact, as an album, Mary Lou Lord provided hope that the folk genre goals of simplicity did not preclude melodiousness and rhythm...