Pebble To A Pearl

With this album, Costa comes defiantly into her own.

Though blessed with a singularly smoky, supple voice, she simply lacks the material; Pebble is, incongruously, too smooth to turn into a pearl.

Costa was often overshadowed by the slick production on her previous two albums; here, her vocals are foregrounded in the mix, and the depth and range of her performances really shine.

On Pebble to a Pearl--an authoritative, refreshingly organic pop-funk manifesto featuring musicians who've played with Al Green and Stevie Wonder--the exhilaration of liberation literally screams from R&B workout 'Can't Please Everybody.'

Costa has always been more a purist, but Justin Stanley's feline production inflates her torpid lyrics. [Fall 2008, p.86]

Too often, though, Pebble is like a falsely vintage digital photo with specks, grain and worn edges Photoshopped in--it’s convincing on the surface but crumbles under close inspection.

The result is Costa's most natural-sounding record by a mile; compared to the jittery electro-funk of 2001's "Everybody Got Their Something."...Yet as any Winehouse fan knows, soul music needs a little unease to transcend baby-making utility, and with none of that here, Costa's creation occasionally comes off like a well-appointed museum piece.

At the end of the day, however, Pebble to a Pearl is still a great record, radiating and capturing a nostalgic vibe that would sound faked and forced in the hands of others.

It's too entrenched in the past to take Costa forward, but there's nobody relighting the old fires with such authenticity. [Mar 2009, p.96]