Where It Started

After a six-year absence, silken-voiced Sarah Sadler returns to recording with her well-realized second album Where It Started. Her breezy, bittersweet vocal manner — suggesting a cross between Leigh Nash and Taylor Swift — makes up in warmth what it lacks in heft, and her latest songs (co-written with her father, worship music composer Gary Sadler) fit her winsome style nicely. Love and its complications is the overriding theme of this album, expressed with a fragile sense of pride and resolve. Sadler offers a word of counsel to friends in distress in the buoyant “Get Yourself Together” and “Runaway.” But she’s most comfortable expressing her own romantic frustrations, struggling with a flawed relationship in “Pedaling Backwards” and mourning a painful breakup in “Old Habits.” The album’s crisp production combines acoustic guitars with clean piano lines and the occasional electronica touch. Those looking for spiritual overtones will be disappointed; these songs are mostly about young men and women and how they feel about each other. Within those boundaries, Where it Started is an engaging effort.