Tamar Kaprelian has released another video from her sessions at Jack Johnson's Solar Powered Plastic Plant in Los Angeles, CA. This time, the 23-year-old singer/songwriter performs "Should Have Known Better" off of her stunningly beautiful debut studio album "Sinner or a Saint," came out August. The track is darker in their approach, bringing string sections into the mix. Kaprelian veers darker in "Should Have Known Better," which is definitely about someone who did me wrong and led me in the wrong direction," Kaprelian explains. "Had I not gone through that experience, I wouldn't have written the record that I wrote."Kaprelian was born in Scottsdale, Arizona and brought up in both Georgia and California by Armenian parents, surrounded by love and great music. Tender at First Blush, but With a Tough and Feisty Core. Kaprelian was discovered in the modern way: winning a cover contest on YouTube, piggybacked onto someone else's success. The song was "Apologize," by OneRepublic, one of the more vaporous pop hits in recent memory. Her version, a delicate little slice of piano soul, cuts through some of the original's haze, its wounded tenderness purposeful, not accidental.
The ten songs on Kaprelian's debut album are full of dashed hopes, fierce renewal, and proud vulnerability. It's a coming-of-age record that chronicles her life, relationships, and her utter determination to create an album that is real and true to Kaprelian, both personally and artistically. Mainly, her album reflects the conundrum facing young female singer-songwriters in the age of Lady Gaga: barring the embrace of the extreme, there appear to be a decreasing number of options for success. "Should Have Known Better" is an unexpected and not wholly unpleasant hybrid of Billy Joel and Demi Lovato. That Kaprelian can pull off most of these styles well demonstrates her flexibility, if not her maturity. At 23 she's still young, though, and also a little feistier than her songs. She was definitely the only one wearing leopard-print heels at this club, which favors acoustic, earthy singers.
It's a winning, if sometimes naive, record, full of songs that sound frail at first, thanks largely to Kaprelian's genteel voice, but are in fact sturdy and alluring: the stuff of shampoo commercials, dramas on ABC Family and the Lilith Fair revival. Growing up, Kaprelian gravitated toward the rock classics her musician father schooled her in. Listeners new to Kaprelian will find that there's a little vocal similarity to Paramore's Hayley Williams at times, along with hints of a possible Ben Folds influence here and there. In a world of pop music dominated by girls trying too hard to come off as sleazy and edgy, it's refreshing to hear a pop album that sounds genuine.
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