Phoebe Snow's extraordinary debut album, one of the year's sleepers, has steadily climbed the charts, despite minimal fanfare and no major tour. Born in New York in 1952 and brought up in Teaneck, New Jersey, Snow emerges a prodigiously talented singer/writer/acoustic guitarist in a jazz-rock idiom, with a highly distinctive alto. Snow's singing is cool, yet not blasé; perfect enunciation...

Unlike her fellow Jersey rebel, Bruce Springsteen, Phoebe Snow connected directly with her audience the first time out. Her debut recording received almost no advertising and publicity, yet it climbed, slowly but inexorably, into the Top Ten. And unlike Patti Smith, the other Jersey-bred new star of the last Jersey-dominated year, Snow made her mark without having to perform for a cult audience....

Phoebe Snow is not yet a mature artist. Though the makings are nowhere more evident than on her third album, she still hasn't been able to concentrate fully enough on the use of her voice as an instrument, or the development of a persona through which to sing. She also must either study songwriting or devote more energy to interpretation.

Given that, It Looks like Snow shapes up as Snow's most...

Phoebe Snow has never been a woman content to follow fashion when her talent's at stake. Frustrated with the music business, the gifted vocalist with the shimmering alto voice and impeccable phrasing pulled up stakes following 1981's Rock Away.

On Something Real, a thoughtful reflection on grown-up love affairs, Snow breaks her silence with songs that are as tasteful and challenging as she is, From...

Never Letting Go is framed by two copious ballads on which Phoebe Snow sings with an intellectual and emotional understanding joined to a technical mastery that no current popular singer can equal. The rest of Never Letting Go fritters itself away on seven trivial songs, five of them written by Snow.

In her repeated attempts to compose memorable pop laments, Snow lacks a felicitous verbal touch....