Only a very few performers put out their debut album having already established themselves as frontrunners for the Grammy for best new artist. Sienna Spiro is in that category, and let’s just say that “The Visitor,” her first full-length release, does nothing to diminish her chances in the category. As the title hints, it’s an album of songs written largely about feeling like a temporary intruder in the lives of others, especially cavalier men. But it’s unlikely that we’ll look back 10 or 20 years from now and think that Spiro was just a pop-culture transient. Hers is a voice that ought to have a lifetime’s staying power, bolstered by a lyrical and musical sensibility that provide everything her instrument needs to deliver a happy succession of knockout blows.
We should probably say “happy-sad,” because no one will mistake “The Visitor” for a bundle of good cheer, even if the effect of experiencing her powerhouse chops is inevitably a euphoric one. The table has already been well set by her signature song, “Die on This Hill,” which made the top 20 in the U.S. last fall, and will probably have the enduring quality of a No. 1. Spiro has already instantly sold out a North American tour this fall based largely on the strength of that tune, along with some other keepers that have dribbled out, one by one, in the interim. It might count as a classic ballad even if it just stuck to its verses and choruses and didn’t include a bridge. But it has a corker, leading up to the cathartic moment when she repeats the phrase “I wish something mattered,” prefacing it with “God….” the second time, for a flash of emphatic anger. It’s around this point you either become putty in her hands or might have to admit to some bizarre immunity to emotional deliverance.
