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Natalie Walker: Urban Angel Label: Dorado Music Released: 2007

Urban Angel is the debut album from Philadelphia’s Natalie Walker, stepping out on her own after serving as a member of electronic group Daughter Darling. The album reflects the 25-year-old Walker’s influences in pop and electronica, with just a little side of hip-hop to create a sound that at times recalls artists such as Portishead, Massive Attack, Garbage, and Sarah McLachlan.

“Crush” leads off the album with an atmospheric and sexy vibe that highlights Walker’s alluring voice. Lush, electronic soundscapes pervade the album, clearly defining it as more electronica than pop or rock. Walker’s angelic voice floats above spacey synths on the title track, and lyrics such as “She pulls us in / And wraps us in her chill / She holds us close / And now we can be still” summarize the album’s vibe.

Lead single “No One Else” continues in this vein, with a hauntingly romantic sound that was selected for use on HBO’s hit show Entourage. “Quicksand” and “Rest Easy” feature trancier mid-tempo beats, with Walker delivering up a sexy ode to resting easy in a lover’s eyes on the latter track. Electronic kingpins the Thievery Corporation also offer up a remix of “Quicksand” as a bonus track.

Songs such as “Faith,” “Waking Dream,” and “Circles” go even more ambient, and it becomes easy to imagine the album as the perfect soundtrack for any rave’s chill room. In summary, there’s no doubt that Walker has an alluring voice, but the album’s overwhelmingly ambient sound may limit the size of her potential audience and scope of potential radio play. If ambient electronica is your thing, then Urban Angel is for you. But it would be interesting to hear what Walker might come up with, given some more uptempo material.