Neptune City : Nicole Atkins : Review : Rolling Stone

Nicole Atkins is the kind of New Jersey dreamer who thinks it's more romantic to fantasize about leaving a small town than to actually get the hell out of Dodge. And, damn, if she isn't convincing. Maybe that's because the noir-pop chanteuse knows firsthand what it's like to get out. Having left her native Neptune City in the Nineties, bound for North Carolina and later New York, Atkins pays tribute to the shore town she grew up in (just south of Asbury Park) with a homesickness that feels real because it's so conflicted. Draping her throaty voice over velvety surf-guitar ballads, orchestral studio pop and misty piano-bar melodies, sounding like a slightly more femme k.d. lang, she calls out the bridges, bars and ex-boyfriends she left behind, reassuring herself that "I'll come down/Walk around a while/Until I'm sure/I can never go home again." But it's telling that one of her best songs, the street-band vaudeville number "Brooklyn's on Fire," was written for her current home. Some Jersey nostalgia is born of knowing that you'll never have to live there again.