Her solipsistic tales are those of a woman in transition, sung with the candor of Fiona Apple and the airiness of Tori Amos . She's very post-college. Her songs examine Cupid's powers and her own emotional interior. The peppy numbers are earnest and idealistic. But despite her deft lyrics, the music sounds too familiar, too ordinary.
Percussion is kept to a minimum, with splashes of drum programming adding to the ethereal quality.
Her soulful alto, almost always multitracked with harmonies, allows her to almost intuitively inhabit her songs, scooping notes for impact. In the end, it's an apostrophe given perhaps to a long-gone lover. In these bare moments, Naess is most forthright and compelling. Naess has yet to prove she can transition between those opposing moods with the finesse of Beth Orton, for example. Consequently, when she attempts to rock, it feels sort of half-assed, a bit forced and sluggish.