Saving Cadence, Anuhea serve up standout tunes

"It Always Comes Back Around"
Saving Cadence
(Treblebass)

Saving Cadence is moving forward this month. The trio — Glenn Molina (bass/keyboards), Taylor Fite (drums/vocals) and Jordan Fite (guitar/vocals) — has a track on Mountain Apple’s new alt-rock compilation, "Alternative HI," and is also celebrating the recent release of this full-length album. The trio’s depth as writers requires no remakes to create a full set of interesting observations on love and life.

Acoustic guitar and percussion dominate the musical journey. "K-I-S-S-I-N-G" reworks the playground taunt in imaginative and romantic ways. From one perspective it still sounds a bit childish, but the song is also disarming, sweet and whimsical.

The trio gets deeper into its craft elsewhere. There’s no whimsy in a song titled "Life Gets Hard," but the lyrics are inspirational and the arrangement emphasizes the group’s strength as musicians.

There are other memorable songs. Who hasn’t welcomed the realization you’re no longer emotionally tied to someone who broke your heart? Saving Cadence expresses the feeling here with "Getting By Without You."

A big advantage to a "physical" CD is that the format allows the artist to craft a coherent musical experience for the listener. Saving Cadence does that by closing the album with the title track and leaving the listener with a strong message of faith and hope.

"Dangerous"

"For Love"
Anuhea(Anuhea Jams)

Anuhea Jenkins purrs and coos seductively through 13 songs — some Jawaiian, others pop, a couple with "urban" elements — on her second album, released last month.

Acoustic guitar, bass, drums and the occasional ukulele are all she needs in terms of instrumental support, but keyboards are added with good results on several songs. All but two of the songs are originals, and they demonstrate her abilities as a songwriter.

Several stand out: "Looking for Love" is a sweet lyric blend of romance and hip-hop slang. "Simple Love Song" is exactly that, simple and very nicely done. "No Time" describes a complicated relationship in which decisions made turn out to have costs.

Anuhea takes the project in a completely different direction with the final song, "What Am I Doing?" Accompanied by a single acoustic piano, she expresses in somber, fragile tones the pain of being left for another woman. It’s a heartbreaker of a song but a brilliant arrangement.

It’s risky, of course, to assume every song comes from personal experience. That said, Anuhea stokes curiosity with "Crown Royal," a first-person account of being "in love with a king" who "sets me up to let me down every morning … wastes my time and money (and) makes me not say what I mean." The catchy Jawaiian arrangement sounds deceptively romantic at first, but a more chilling description of alcoholism has rarely come from the pen of a local writer.

There are a couple of questionable choices. She ventures into problematic territory with "Fight for Me Tonight," a call for a man she sees in a nightclub to show his interest by fighting for her. "Higher Than the Clouds," a catchy Jawaiian valentine to the man who takes her "higher than the clouds," is tarnished by gratuitous faux-Rasta rapping. The album’s strengths far outweigh any weakness.

"Looking for Love"