My One and Only Thrill

by

Melody Gardot

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Melody Gardot released her first album, "Worrisome Heart", just last year and a thing of rare beauty it is.

But a year ago, much of the discussion about Melody Gardot centered on the way she'd recovered from a terrible road accident and had used music as a therapeutic lifeline.

She was an inspiration to people both in and out of music.

Now it seems that although she is at times still referring to her traumatic feelings of the tragic accident some 8 years ago, the confidence is evidently beaming out even more in this album.

This follow-up has a lot to live up to - and it succeeds.

This time Gardot has strings to swell her romantic sound, but her vocals are as beguilingly intimate as ever.

Now just 25-years-old, Melody has expanded on the rich jazz and blues influences of Worrisome Heart to create an intimate second offering : Melody has written all of the songs on the album (a stunning version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" is the only non-original tune).

Again she shows a flair for catchy, haunting melodies, poetic lyrics and sounds much more worldly wise than her young age would suggest.

This record mixes the more classic form of crossing Jazz and blues ("Baby I'm a fool/your heart is as black as night") with some almost suttle samba like beats (i.e. "Les Etoiles/who will comfort me").

If anything, her vocal breadth on this glossy follow-up is even broader. She has the confidence to tackle a bold interpretation of a standard like "Over the Rainbow" (here given a flightly Brazilian treatment). It is produced as an acoustic undertone along with settled and relaxed saxophone. The South American sound certainly gives the song a refreshing tone and all the components make for a stunning vocal performance from Gardot.

Her scat singing is thoroughly convincing, when it could easily stumble on the mountain of clichés that accompany the style, but it's her breathy, almost lisping tones that will be most likely to establish her as a voice to be reckoned with.

If comparisons must be drawn to Gardot's smooth and seemingly effortless vocal, no current artist makes the cut and it's the classy, sad voices of Julie London and Peggy Lee that echo through the years. The vocal-to-instrumentation audio dynamic is perfect throughout, thanks to the fantastic job and the subtle talent of the producer Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux, Herbie Hancock...).

Kudos to the shimmering orchestral arrangements from Vince Mendoza.

"With a warm voice and a sensitive way with a song, Phildelphia's Gardot mixes jazz and R&B with elegant string arrangements and acoustic guitar to beguiling, small-hours effect". -Q (Magazine)

"Creative, imaginative and a daring approach to her music gives Gardot's second album a pleasant listen with many poignant moments on the way. And despite maybe jazz not being to everyone's taste, it's certainly worth sacrificing some of your time to endure 45 minutes of smooth and at times magic pieces of music". - Sean Wright.

My favourite tracks: "My One And Only Thrill", "If The Stars Wew Mine", "Les Etoiles", "Our Love Is Easy" and "Somewhere over the Rainbow".

Have a pleasant listening experience.

Update: the abum debuts at # 2 of the The Billboard Top Jazz Albums.

Issue date:2009-05-16

Worrisome Heart

Half the Perfect World

Bare Bones

Melody Gardot has a range reminsicent of Billie Holiday's and a timbre suggestive of the quietly seductive qaulity of Brazil's Astrud Gilberto. Someone who has survived a life-threatening hit-and-run accident and who lives in chronic pain (coping through the use of a TENS device), Melody brings to mind similar recent, heroic, talented singers like the late Nancy LaMott and Eva Cassidy or the still active Wesla Whitfield who, despite taking a bullet and suffering paralysis from the waist-down following a botched robbery attempt, became most active as a performer and recording artist after her setback.

A major difference between Melody and the other three mentioned singers is that thus far she has eschewed the "standards" (evergreens from the Great American Songbook composed by Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Arlen, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein/Hart, etc.) which "jazz" singers have traditionally regarded as a kind of preliminary litmus test for admission to their art. Her repertory, consisting almost entirely of original material, is tuneful, personally touching, and well matched to her vocal strengths. Still it's questionable whether any of her recorded songs are strong enough to become "standards," or to exhibit the staying power of, say, "Over the Rainbow," one of the few standards she has recorded.

In some respects, the classic status of the Harold Arlen tune is surprising, given the challenge the song presents to any singer who attempts it, from Judy Garland's celebrated version to the hundreds of interpretations that have followed it. The first two notes of the song require that the vocalist travel upwards an entire octave (a sizable yet exacting leap from the first to the 2nd note). In jazz it's long been an unwritten "rule" that even the best improvisers (Louis, Miles, Coltrane; Ella, Sarah, Roberta Gambarini) respect the composer's original melody for the first and last choruses (by contrast, everything that happens in between the "in" and "out" choruses depends upon the improvisatory inventiveness of the performer). Melody begins the song by moving up a 3rd for the song's second note, coming up a 6th short of the octave interval in Harold Arlen's melody. Moreover, in Gardot's version the song is given a quasi-minor modality and ends, finally, on an unresolved chord.

Perhaps the changes are intended to reflect a less sanguine, more tentative and melancholic (and therefore more personal) view than the song's normally exhuberant, optimistic verses seem to call for. Or perhaps the changes merely reflect a better fit between the performer's vocal equipment and her material. In either case, the performance, though faithful to Yip Harburg's words, transforms Arlen's original melody into a different song.