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Purely Sara Petite

Tiger Mountain
Tiger Mountain
By Sara Petite

Manatease Records: 2006

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This review first appeared in the April 27, 2006 issue of the North County Times.

With a voice nearly as nasal as that of cult country fave Iris DeMent, the singing of San Diego's Sara Petite can take a bit of getting used to.

Give it a chance, though, and you run serious risk of getting hooked.

On her new CD, Petite displays a confident delivery and down-to-earth charm that, coupled to 11 nicely crafted tunes, create as original a brand of country folk rock as San Diego County has heard since Eve Selis first arrived on the scene.

The arrangements incorporate banjo and fiddle as well as guitar – and on some cuts, the result is deep country ("Coming Home," "Tiger Mountain"). But elsewhere, she drifts more into a rock format. And "Ruby" is folk.

And yet, despite this stylistic range, "Tiger Mountain" is a cohesive album – due to the fact that every song is clearly, purely Sara Petite.