The
vocal attributes that dominate this disc and make it an audiophile's joy are
tonal flexibility, ambitious coloration and astute use of vibrato.
Before this album (I'm thinking of early collections of Rossini interpretations, in
particular), Bartoli was often accused of playing it predictable and safe with
regard to repertoire. Here she quiets all of her critics with sheer
technique. Bartoli covers all of the bases here with rapid-fire lilting
trills, with languorous and breathy, but still controlled phrasing and with
emotive shadings that cover the entire spectrum of the human heart. This
is the disc that proves that mezzo is probably a limiting category for
Bartoli. Juxtapose "Exsultate, Jubilate" with "E Susana
non Vien" on this disc and appreciate how seamlessly Bartoli handles
chasmically disparate emotional terrain. Her despair never devolves into
bathos and her exultation never transmogrifies into shrillness or
histrionics. She is the complete, elegant singer. Get this disc if
you enjoy Mozart and want to hear thoughtful yet ebullient interpretations of
his work.
For
more info on Cecilia Bartoli
including audio samples, go here.
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LEDISI
Soul
singer indeed...Ledisi and her band Anibade are the Bay Area's most recent
musical benefaction to the world. Ledisi is an Oakland based singer/songwriter/musician who is classically trained in voice (opera) and
piano. She is very well known by music's cognoscenti and is solidly booked on
the club circuit on both coasts. Ledisi and her band are true journeymen
and journeywomen who perform live 4-5 nights a week perfecting their sinuous,
infectious blues-soul-jazz hybrid ear candy. From what I've heard, to see
Ledisi live is a transformative experience. Ledisi is blessed with a
supple and soulful alto that is equally comfortable negotiating complicated jazz
arpeggios, uncovering the melodies in rhythm centered, bottom heavy funk, or
languidly and poignantly delivering a blues dirge. Ledisi and her band (Sundra
Manning: co-writer, producer, keyboards/organ; The Braxton Brothers: bass and
sax; Tommy Bradford: drums; LeGerald Normand: vocals) write their own material, and their approach to songwriting seems to place equal
emphasis on forward thinking instrumental expressiveness as well as on
substantive lyrical content. The neo-soul umbrella has become very crowded
of late with artists who neither evince a new sound and novel approach nor
deliver the goods very soulfully. Ledisi and Anibade more credibly
fit under the neo-soul rubric than any new band I've heard in the past few
years. Recognize!
WHAT
YOU SHOULD BUY:
This
is a magnificent collection of robustly jazz-inflected, hip-hopp(ed) soul(ed)
out grooves, with an emphasis on the groove. Anibade, as a band, is an
incredibly tight ensemble. The bass player and drummer display a solidly
locked symbiosis. One of the really fun things about this band is that,
in lieu of guitars on a few tunes, Sundra Manning's keyboards and organ
beautifully handle additional rhythmic resonance as well as melodic
complementarity. This woman is bad! There
is no empty three minute radio-friendly tripe here. Ledisi and the gang
take their own sweet time fleshing out a song's melodic and harmonic
structure. They ain't in a hurry 'cause they've actually got something
worthwhile to say. One other clue that Anibade is a real band are the seamless
changes in tempo and key they handle in the course of a single song. You
won't hear changes like these on dumbed down radiofare.
Ledisi,
as a singer, is quite fond of exaggerated legato and uses it to good effect,
especially in the loping, sexy "I Want'cha Baby." I can almost
see her in the studio or on stage gesticulating as if she's pulling these
phrases from somewhere deep within herself. Soulful doesn't really begin
to cover her phrasing and delivery. Maybe if you pair it with a
descriptor like "churchified", you get a bit closer to a full
picture of her vocal gift. Yeah, she's "churchified", too, but
with the rough edges sanded down a bit (i.e. no dissonant notes and no sanctified
bathos). Although Ledisi's natural register seems to be alto, she
routinely and marvelously leaps higher or lower without a significant loss of
volume, control or tunefulness. Apparently, she can credibly sing
wherever she wants. Ledisi is also a more than adept scat singer. Scat
runs have become a vocal cliché these days, and they are usually poorly
executed. Ledisi, though, is the real deal and expertly steps
outside of melody on these runs, finds interesting ways to provide
counterpoint to the main lines and evinces fresh harmonic inventiveness with
her added phrases.
Lyrically
this album takes many risks, the biggest of which is the tune about incest,
"Papa Loved to Love Me." It provides a very affecting story
while also being strong instrumentally. The quasi-operatic fills during
the early vamps in this piece could have misfired and been over the top, but they work with
the song's storytelling trajectory. This song very simply but poignantly
ends with a single line about personal agency. Ledisi sings "now
I'm free..." Fantastic! Strong storytelling is ubiquitous on this
album.
If
you want to hear virtuosic, seemingly improvised but still well constructed
singing over achingly funkdified grooves, get this album.
My one qualm: there is never any good reason
to pronounce e-s-c-a-p-e like x-scape. Ledisi does this in
the chorus of the awe-inducingly glorious "Take Time." For
shame! This song is one of my favorites from the album, but one of the
choruses is marred by this linguistic snafu. I revel in the whimsy of slang
wordplay and lackadaisical pronunciation like everyone else, but it has no
place in a semi-serious environment like this song. Still, this album is an
audiophile's joy. Of the two Ledisi albums reviewed here, buy this one
first to get your feet wet.
Ledisi,
Anibade and a host of guest instrumentalists recast jazz standards like 'Round
Midnight," "Autumn Leaves," "In a Sentimental Mood",
and "Straight No Chaser" with self-assurance and
inventiveness. I guess Ledisi wanted to make sure we all know that, in a
addition to being a soul singer (the title of her first album), she is also
quite the jazz singer (this album's subtitle). The people who really
imbibed her debut CD already know this, though. In the body of the
prodigiously talented Ledisi, it seems silly to try to separate the soul
singer from the jazz singer. Those idioms clearly inform her personal
style with equal weight.
While
the offerings on the disc are classic jazz tunes, Ledisi and the band don't
provide rote straight ahead reinterpretations of them. Everything gets
twisted in the best way. Take, for instance, the ultra-modern treatment
of Monk's "Round Midnight". Nelson Braxton puts his bass
to work in the service of both melody and rhythm. Sundra Manning just
kills playing a groove heavy, ambience building Fender Rhodes on this tune as
well. The band leaves ample room for Ledisi to show us why hers is one
of the most nimble and complexly textured voices in music today. Monk, I
think, would be tickled. He might even do a little dance around his
piano.
D'Angelo
must be kicking himself and, perhaps, hiding his head in shame after hearing
Ledisi's reinterpretation of his hit "Brown Sugar" into a seriously
swinging jazz piece. Ledisi combines this tune with another jazz
composition called "Sugar", adds some lyrics to both and just goes to
work stretching the new song's melodic and harmonic innards. I really am unable to
convey adequately the vocal pyrotechnics on display on this tune.
Wait...I need a moment just to compose myself. The upright bass is being
slapped, cajoled and coaxed something awful here. This is sonic sustenance,
folks!
Not
only can Ledisi and Anibade creatively and cleverly cover classic tunes,
they're able to write a few original songs that I feel will become part of the
canon. The languorous ballad "Land of the Free" simply
delivers on all points: it's lyrically pithy; it makes brave harmonic choices;
and it's got a melody that stays in the listener's ear long after the song has
ended.
Buy
this album if you feel that straight ahead jazz has gotten way too heady of
late. This album will show you where the heart is in the music.
Buy it, please buy it!!! It will transform your life!
GO
TO: http://www.ledisi.com
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Madeleine Peyroux
If
pop music journalists are to be believed, everybody and their mother sounds
“just like Billie Holiday.”
They said that about early Cassandra Wilson, about the Eryka Badu of
the “On and On” years, about Fiona Apple during the Tidal days
(that comparison just makes me giggle uncontrollably) and about 2002 Blue Note
break out artist Norah Jones, to name but a few.
Apparently, to merit the Billie label all a singer needs is a
moderately brassy voice with just a hint of tremolo and penchant for self
confession, confected or not.
Honestly, though, the only vocalist I’ve heard in my 31 years of
living and listening who really does sound like Billie is a white girl from
Paris by way of Georgia named Madeleine
Peyroux.
Peyroux has Billie’s phrasing (lazy and slightly behind the beat),
her bracing, tenuous alto, her overall timbral coloration, and Billie’s
unique gift to sing the blues without seeming to be courting pity.
Peyroux also sounds remarkably like Patsy Kline, and that fact provides
strong evidence for the parent-sibling, or perhaps sibling-sibling taxonomic
hierarchies and relationships endemic to country music and the blues.
(Sorry about that last bit; I often think in cataloging and
classification jargon).
The
ascent of Norah Jones’ debut album for Blue Note Records, Come Away With
Me, to the top of the billboard charts is what prompted me to dig the
Peyroux album out of a box and to listen to it anew. The press of late has
been going on and on (and deservedly so) about Norah being a mere 23 years
old, singing and writing in a musical style that belies her youth, and having
a voice that distinguishes itself immediately.
I thought to myself, “I’ve heard this story before.”
The year was 1997, the venue, oddly enough, was Lillith Fair and the
singer was a then 22 year old whose songs were a curious mix of folk, blues,
jazz and country, but anachronistically so.
The music, sonically and melodically, did not resemble anything like
the late 90’s output from artists in any of those genres.
The music seemed to transport the listener to earlier times and places
as disparate as 1930’s Beale Street, or the time “when Paris was a
woman” or even, 1950’s Nashville.
Oh yeah… and the architect and executor of this aural mélange,
Madeleine Peyroux, did indeed remind me of Billie.
WHAT
YOU SHOULD BUY:
Madeleine
Peyroux Dreamland, Atlantic Records, 1996
I
simply do not understand why this album is the only one extant for this
singer-songwriter-musician. Peyroux,
on this disc, covers songs written and/or made famous by others: Billie,
Patsy, Edith Piaf and Bessie Smith. She
also, however, pens some original compositions that, while being purposely and
positively imitative of the historical and musical eras that those women
represent, evince such creative superfluity and intelligent recasting that I
forgive her. For some reason, I never think "derivative" while
listening to this disc. Part of that is the sheer brilliance of
Peyroux's own musical faculties. The other part is smart
architecture. Peyroux surrounds herself with talented "young
lions" hailing from pop, rock, blues and jazz. There's James
Carter on tenor sax and clarinet, Marc
Ribot on guitar and dobro, Regina Carter
on violin, Leon Parker
on drums and Cyrus Chestnut on
piano, just to name a few of the true virtuosos in supporting roles
here. You can't really go wrong in building a song with these folks in
the crew.
The thing,
though, that makes it all gel is Peyroux's voice. Peyroux brazenly opens
this disc with a cover of Patsy's "Walkin' After Midnight".
She's letting the listener know right away that she's undaunted
by comparisons to country music's first lady (sorry Loretta Lynn) and one of
the most soulfully elegiac voices there ever was. Peyroux's reading of
"Walkin'..." certainly references Patsy's (and purposely so, I
think), but whereas Patsy seems to push the lyric in the direction of a blues
dirge (however jaunty), Peyroux's version gives
the impression of an open-ended, insouciant speaker. Peyroux's version, in contrast to the trajectory of the
lyric, seems to hint at a kind of breezy self-possession, whereas Patsy seems
resolutely broken. One way that Peyroux accomplishes this lyrical
confidence is to be found in the innate timbral character of her voice.
Peyroux's voice is a wonderful mix of brass and reed instrumentality. It
has the airiness, warmth and controlled vibrato of reed instruments, but the
steely texture, and bell-like resonance of, say, a fluegelhorn.
The Billie
similarities extend to the way that Peyroux closely listens to, reinterprets or completely
invents the horn lines in many of these songs. A wonderful example of this is to
be found on Peyroux's reading of the Billie tune, "Getting Some Fun out
of Life." I've had to listen to this track dozens of times because
I'm amazed at how much like Billie Peyroux sounds here. This
song is one of the few on this album that does not have actual horns, but I
hear what would be the horn lines in Peyroux's vocals. Here she reacts
so beautifully to
Cyrus Chestnut's piano lines, choosing interesting intervals with which to play
out the call and response. She makes very astute contrapuntal choices.
This song, in particular, reminds me of Billie's interplay on those early sides she did with Earl
Hines and Teddy Wilson.
So, while Peyroux
does sounds like Patsy and Billie, her emulation doesn't seem to be
forced, empty and plastic. It all feels very organic and real. I
think Peyroux is one of those old souls (probably once a contemporary of Patsy
and Billie), who, in the course of being reborn over and over, has
learned something about heartbreak, love and life that the rest of us simply
do not know. And her music is the better for it.
.
Go figure... If you disagree with the things I say about these albums, please,
by all means, do email me. I'm always up for some clever and useful back and forth
about music. Emphasis on "useful." Don't expect me to
engage you on why 50 Cent and not Ja Rule, is really the new Tupac.
Nah...I'm just playin'; I actually have some theories on how to build a
persuasive case for Mr. (anti) Wanksta.
Madeleine Peyroux