Saray Pray – A May Morning album review

I never caught Sarah Pray’s first album, and frankly speaking, I didn’t know this album wasn’t her first album till I started doing some research. I’ve just returned from hiking for a week and the first thing I did when I returned (well, not the first thing, but you know what I mean) was to check my email and I saw this assignment, so I immediately found the album and listened to it straight through while relaxing after a much needed shower. And sometimes, you just need the right setting to really enjoy an album, because I highly doubt I would enjoy the album anywhere else. I wouldn’t play it driving to work or have a song of it play over a party, but as a nice little serenade to a weary soul Sarah Pray’s “A May Morning” is quite a treat, beautifully worded and sung from one weary traveler to another.

Sarah Pray started off singing Linda Ronstadt songs and her influence along with Emmylou Harris and Mazzy Star punctuates all 11 songs on this well-constructed album. Although, unlike those forbearers, Pray doesn’t have a hook song or something I can really play or recommend to you that would show you what I am talking about. First, the songs all blend together without one really forcing you to replay it right after you hear it. This may sound like a criticism, but it is more of a frustration because it is very hard to convince a person to sit through an entire album, just so you can really be interested in an artist. Not a lot of people have that kind of time.

If you do listen to the album and then want to share it with someone, you can always explain it to them like this: “A May Morning” is an album of experience, loss, and hope painstakingly written and sung from the soul of a young woman with an almost child-like voice, but with very powerful lyrics never hitting you with more than you can handle, but giving you enough to lay down, look up, and breathe.