Sometimes you can walk down the same road every day, and then you notice something that changes everything. So says singer-songwriter Leslie Nuss who escaped small town Illinois for life in the Big Apple, a stone's throw from Times Square. In the process she found a new life as a musician, and a new take on the singer, the songwriter and the song. Key words in her work, she says, are 'pain' and 'joy' and 'sexual feelings'. Nuss is about feeling, sincerity and finding the beauty within. "Walk around the streets around here, and look at the people, and look at the expressions on their faces and it seems like something in them has died. I'm about living, really living and doing what you really want to do," she says. The Nuss influences run the gamut from the Pixies and Led Zep through Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the voyage of self-discovery of Babe (the pig!). Her songs likewise cover a spectrum from the erotic ('No Ordinary Lover') to the pop ('Time Capsule') to a starstruck tribute to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke ('Concert Boy'). A Leslie Nuss song is darkly beautiful. It's full of feeling. Most of all you remember it. "I write songs that stick in people's heads," she says. Leslie Nuss is an independent woman with her own independent label. In early 2001, she is releasing her second album, Action Hero Superstar. The title is ironic. The statement of intent is not. Let Leslie Nuss help you find the beauty within. (above review by Steve Redmond)