BITE-SIZED: Seeing for the Very First Time (Barbara Weathers, 1995)

Atlantic Starr is typically associated with Sharon Bryant's vocals, but the voice I always tie to the band is Barbara Weathers. Weathers replaced Bryant in the mid-eighties and while her tenure was not as long as Bryant's, her voice powered the band through two successful albums, and a few singles which topped the charts.

Weathers never got as many showcases as Bryant, which was a shame. She has a great, clear voice that sways somewhere between pop and soul without feeling manufactured. She left Atlantic Starr in the late eighties to try a solo career, and while it has some decent tracks, her self-titled debut failed to hit it big. In 1995, Weathers returned with her second album, which only saw a release in Japan. She would not release another album until 2011.

 Touching on jazz, gospel and adult contemporary, Seeing for the Very First Time gives Weathers plenty of opportunities to show her talents as a vocalist.

The first thing that stands out about the album is how clean and polished the production is. It reminded me of Will Downing or Diane Reeves's stuff from the early nineties. It sounds a little outdated for 1995, but as a platform for Weathers’ voice, it works.

Seeing for the Very First Time is a treasure of a LP. It is ridiculous that it was not released Stateside, or anywhere else for that matter. It's more of  a shame that the only way I could listen to the whole thing was by finding one of the original CDs. This is the kind of album that would have benefited from iTunes or Spotify.

Highlight: A piece of pop gold, 'Some Things Are Worth The Wait' is the first track that alerted me to the existence of this album (it is also one of the few tracks - at this time - that I could find on Youtube).