Reviewed by Alastair McCollum

Kathmandu-born, Italian-raised and now residing in Nashville, Taddonio has certainly managed to fit a fair amount of life experience into her 29 years, leading a nomadic life travelling from Israel to India and beyond with her mother in her young years until settling in Tennessee to study music at Belmont University. This itinerant upbringing is reflected in this music graduate and questioning believer's debut six track EP in which she shares her struggles with faith, love, life, sex and God. This is a deeply sincere collection of genre spanning songs. Cristina has a fresh and bold musical and lyrical style which is hard to pigeonhole, though that's never a bad thing. Taking in rock, pop, jazz and blues and citing influences as broad as The Police and Billie Holiday there is both depth and maturity in the words and music of this debut. "Cry" opens the batting with a full throated piano based rock piece a la Tori Amos/Polly Paulsma in which she asks the listener to be willing to bear with Taddonio in her imperfections. Having set out her stall we move through driving rock, via jazzy mellowness to piano pop and end with Nora Jones stylings in "My Love" to close the album.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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