Erin Bode - Don't Take Your Time

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2004
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 55:32
Size: 127,7 MB
Art: Front

(3:46) 1. Don't Take Your Time
(4:14) 2. Here, There and Everywhere
(5:02) 3. In The Pines
(4:51) 4. Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You
(4:55) 5. Time After Time
(4:01) 6. But Not For Me
(3:16) 7. Junior and Julie
(4:18) 8. If It's Magic
(3:50) 9. I've Never Been In Love Before
(4:15) 10. You
(4:18) 11. I Walk A Little Faster
(3:43) 12. Gee Baby Ain't I Good To You
(4:57) 13. Count Your Blessings

Erin Bode's frail, delicate vocal delivery gives her a quality that just wants to grow on you. She's got a friendly manner, and her song selection comes from what we've grown accustomed to over the years. Cyndi Lauper, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and older heroes of the Great American Songbook provide examples of her eclectic taste. It's popular stuff that we welcome all the time. However, Bode's limited vocal range and shallow breath support, while emphasizing her fragile demeanor, serve to restrain the emotional content of her performance.

The lightweight appearance of her vocal delivery give Bode a warm quality that works well on ballads such as "Time After Time" or "You," where folk singing and pop music combine to create lovely melodies and smooth harmony that lingers and remains pleasant to the ear long after the song is over. They're memorable. A piece that contains dramatic aspects, however, such as Bill Monroe's "In the Pines," requires natural force. Heartfelt passion is sorely missed during much of this program.

"Junior and Julie," a quaint jazz selection by Matt Dennis, provides opportunities for a singer to croon and swoon. It's one of those nightclub ballads that should be worn on one's sleeve late at night or in the wee hours. Here, the interpretation fails because a harder-hitting emphasis is needed. The same expectation comes from "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You," where a little hip swinging and head swaggering is called for. Instead, the performance turns this one around, with a coy smile and a shy grin.

Better are songs such as Cy Coleman's "I Walk a Little Faster," where the mood swings gaily from side to side, with whispers becoming appropriate for the lyrical message under consideration. "Count Your Blessings" also wears very well, with creative accompaniment from Bruce Barth, Larry Grenadier and Steve Nelson. Under Bode's control, the Irving Berlin chestnut lies still and personal like evening prayers, and settles in for a restful evening. Bode represents a new face on the scene. Her appeal lies in the way she relates to her audience as the quiet girl next door.~Jim Santella https://www.allaboutjazz.com/dont-take-your-time-erin-bode-maxjazz-review-by-jim-santella

Personnel: Erin Bode- vocals; Adam Maness- piano; Bruce Barth- piano, electric piano; Larry Grenadier- bass; Montez Coleman- drums; Adam Rogers- acoustic guitar; Steve Nelson- vibraphone; Meg Okura- violin; Sydney Rodway- tenor saxophone on "Don't Take Your Time"; Jerry Barnes- background vocals on "Time After Time."

Don't Take Your Time

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Patricia Barber - The Cole Porter Mix

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 56:15
Size: 128.8 MB
Styles: Jazz vocals
Year: 2008
Art: Front

[3:36] 1. Easy To Love
[5:14] 2. I Wait For Late Afternoon And You
[4:29] 3. I Get A Kick Out Of You
[3:39] 4. You're The Top
[3:47] 5. Just One Of Those Things
[4:45] 6. Snow
[3:37] 7. C'est Magnifique
[4:22] 8. Get Out Of Town
[5:02] 9. I Concentrate On You
[5:25] 10. In The Still Of The Night
[3:59] 11. What Is This Thing Called Love
[4:11] 12. Miss Otis Regrets
[4:01] 13. The New Year's Eve Song

Jazz songwriter and pianist Patricia Barber's 2006 album Mythologies, a song cycle based on Ovid's Metamorphosis, is a sprawling work of poetic and musical adventure. Upon its release, it garnered universal acclaim from critics and responsive concert audiences across the United States and Europe. After this rigorous undertaking, Barber could have been forgiven for taking a breather. And on its surface, that seems to be what the Cole Porter Mix is. But in Barber's case, this is far from true. While she claims in her bio that she's been singing his songs for years, and that he's her favorite songwriter, she does anything but a "standard" read on his tunes, though she never undermines their integrity. The album is called a "mix" because Barber has woven three of her own tunes -- written after the manner of Porter's -- into the fabric of the album. Given her austere yet highly original readings of his songs, they fit in seamlessly. She is accompanied here by her longtime backing group of Neal Alger (guitar), Michael Arnopol (bass), and Eric Montzka (drums), with drummer Nate Smith alternating on three tunes, and guest saxophonist Chris Potter appearing on five.

Commencing with the opening number "Easy to Love," with its skeletal bossa nova rhythm (Barber doesn't play in the body of the tune and only contributes a wonderfully economical piano solo), and the relative austerity of her voice, it's obvious this isn't an ordinary standards set. She is faithful to the intent of these songs both lyrically and musically, but she shifts their arrangements in such a way that they are more suited to her deliberately restrained singing voice, and her own vocation as a songwriter. It's the songwriter she is paying tribute to here -- not the tradition. "I Concentrate on You" also carries within it the kernel of bossa, but this time, with her piano fills and artfully incisive manner of accenting, to quote Porter, "how strange the change from major to minor" without invoking the blues (the standard for doing so). Barber's pianism is elegantly idiosyncratic, even enigmatic. Her "cool" singing voice peels away the weight these songs have borne over the years, and instead returns to them their subtlety and gentle sense of humorous irony. There are some wild moments here -- such as the Latin polyrhythms at the heart of "In the Still of the Night," that set up a space for some serious blowing tenor by Potter -- but the spirit of "song" is never compromised. Barber's originals are truly canny, empathic evidence of her true understanding of Porter. "Snow," with its minor-key piano intro opens with: "Do you think of me like snow/cool, slippery and white? Do you think of me like jazz/as hip, as black as night?" The mysterious, dull ache of love and lust in "New Year's Eve Song" evokes the forlorn aspect of Porter but the strange, covert voyeurism of poet Robert Lowell's "Eep Hour": "Will he/peek in the mirror while she/knowing he's watching her tease/stripping the gown with ease/bare as the New Year, she/so in love with her is he..." All the while, the sense of a taut harmonic melody is inseparable from the lyrics, unveiling the secret intent in the song for both listener and singer. The Cole Porter Mix is a very modern form of imitation, as evidenced not only by interpretation but in her evocative compositions too; they mark the greatest form of flattery. But it is also an ingenious manner of reconsidering Porter -- and Barber -- with fresh ears. ~Thom Jurek

The Cole Porter Mix

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Johnathan Blake - Homeward Bound

Styles: Jazz, Post Bop
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 43:28
Size: 104,0 MB
Art: Front

(0:59) 1. In The Beginning Was The Drum
(9:13) 2. Homeward Bound (For Ana Grace)
(7:59) 3. Rivers & Parks
(4:51) 4. Shakin' The Biscuits
(3:24) 5. Abiyoyo
(1:03) 6. On The Break
(6:10) 7. LLL
(9:44) 8. Steppin'Out

Jonathan Blake, one of the most respected and sought-after jazz drummers on the scene, carved a path through the contemporary jazz with some powerful albums released under his name (The Eleventh Hour; Trion) as well as fruitful collaborations with Tom Harrell, Kenny Barron and Dave Holland, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Jaleel Shaw and Maria Schneider. For Homeward Bound, the fourth entry in his personal discography and his debut on the Blue Note Records, he convenes a freshly formed quintet, Pentad, which features prodigious musicians such as saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, vibist Joel Ross, bassist Dezron Douglas and pianist David Virelles.

A one-minute drum intro prepares the terrain for the title track, a beautiful theme that Blake composed for saxophonist Jimmy Greene's daughter, Ana Grace, whose life was taken at the age of six during the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012. Marvelously expressed with odd meter signature, the piece is illuminated by a slick harmonic progression and radiant melodic insight. It also encapsulates mesmerizing improvisation from Ross and Wilkins, who alternate bars with a focused sense of direction, and then Virelles, who scrumptiously blurs the picture with impeccable note choices. Blake also shines, becoming lyrically busy over a vamp marked by contrapuntal adorn.

Boasting a silky synth-soaked texture, “Rivers & Parks” has everyone swinging and grooving, but it’s Wilkins who leaps out, exploring outside boundaries and heating his vocabulary with fervid figures. His mesmeric improvised flights also come into view during the extroverted reworking (in six) of Joe Jackson’s 1982 electropop hit “Steppin’ Out”. Virelles, who enters the stage alone on this one, provides wonderful comping throughout while bass and drums embrace this delicious state of ecstasy.

The two other tunes that didn’t come from the pen of Blake are “Shakin’ the Biscuits”, a bouncy, funkified, bopish frolic written by Douglas that will put you in a great mood, and “Abiyoyo”, a traditional South African children’s song in sextuple meter whose lullabyish melody runs in circles. Blake’s “LLL”, a dedication to the late drummer Lawrence 'Lo' Leathers, is a stirring post-bop number that gives Ross plenty of time to showcase his progressive mallet prowess. The elegant drumming of Blake permeates the album. His accomplishment here is not just a direct result of an accumulated experience throughout the years, but also the refined taste that shows up in everything he does. https://jazztrail.net/blog/johnathan-blake-homeward-bound-album-review

Personnel: Jonathan Blake: drums; Immanuel Wilkins: alto saxophone; Joel Ross: vibraphone; David Virelles: piano; Dezron Douglas: bass.

Homeward Bound

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Lionel Loueke - Close Your Eyes

Styles: Vocal And Guitar Jazz
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 59:58
Size: 140,2 MB
Art: Front

(6:03) 1. Footprints
(6:41) 2. It Might as Well Be Spring
(4:16) 3. Countdown
(4:15) 4. Moon River
(3:39) 5. Solar
(6:24) 6. Blue Monk
(4:38) 7. Body and Soul
(7:44) 8. Close Your Eyes
(7:12) 9. Skylark
(5:26) 10. We See
(3:35) 11. Naima

There is so much to enjoy in Close Your Eyes, guitarist Lionel Loueke’s first ever album of standards, released (*) today. The recorded was made in September 2017 on a one-day break between overlapping tours with Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Loueke plays electric guitar throughout. I was first captivated by his wonderful lightness, almost weightlessness of touch in It Might As Well Be Spring. But he finds all kind of expressive possibilities and directions to take. And with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland he is in top-flight company. Moon River it is all about the silences, the spaces in which to daydream and take one’s time.

Skylark and Wayne Shorter’s Footprints have been the singles which were released on streaming services in advance of today’s release, and both of those are stories with an African angle. In Skylark, the tune emerges from hi-life motifs, and Loueke has a similar way to Martial Solal of of relishing and circling round some favourite contours the tune. Footprints steps into the open from African polyrhythms and a guitar sound and technique which imitate the kora. We are in a place where disguise and surprise are the norm. Coltranes’s Naima, the album closer, is even more effectively disguised.

Solar, on the other hand, is a feverish trio work-out at a ‘you-can’t-be-serious’ tempo, with Eric Harland invited to play out an ending which feels like an elegant and stately denial that any of the ferocious mischief which has gone before it ever actually happened. Blue Monk is a slow walk, where Reuben Rogers lords the time magnificently and empathetically, Loueke finds the dirtiest of blues licks and Eric Harland has something creative, individual and apposite yet out-of-the-ordinary to add at every moment.

The longest tune is the title track Close Your Eyes at nearly eight minutes, but everything flows so easily and naturally, the time passes far too quickly. (*) To be pedantic this album is actually a re-release, in the same way that Hope was. That album had previously been part of high-end vinyl specialist Newvelle’s second season (Reviewed here), with Lionel Loueke in duo with pianist Kevin Hays, and subsequently released as a separate album on Edition Records.This new Sounderscore release is Loueke’s contribution to Newvelle’s Season Three, with this CD presentation adding three tracks to the eight which were on the original release. Sounderscore is run by Swedish/Italian New York-based bassist Massimo Biolcati. https://londonjazznews.com/2021/10/22/lionel-loueke-close-your-eyes/

Personnel: Vocals, Guitar – Lionel Loueke; Acoustic Bass – Reuben Rogers; Drums – Eric Harland; Guitar – Lionel Loueke

Close Your Eyes

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