Madeleine Peyroux Bare Bones

By: detamisha Mood: other Date: 04/22/2009 09:37:17 Music: Jazz

Madeleine's previous CDs were in the modern female acoustic jazz style
- thoughtful folky/country/bluesy covers that provided million selling
records for both herself and Norah Jones. Therefore I think it was very
brave of her to change this formula on this new CD which features one
of her own songs, with the remainder all co-written by her in
collaboration with producer Larry Klein and/or Walter Becker, Joe Henry
etc. Although the overall sound is very similar to her previous CDs -
her wonderful voice to the fore and the laid-back, tasteful backing -
for me this only goes to highlight the lack of killer songs here.


The title track is very Walter Becker, "River of Tears" is a
haunting ballad with nice guitar and violin and I really like the New
Orleans groove of "Somethin' Grand". I didn't particularly like her
homage to her French roots "Our Lady of Pigalle", which sounds a bit
easy listening to me but all the other songs are just about OK.


It's just that overall nothing really stands out, there isn't one
song that really grabs you and all the playing is just a bit too smooth
and restrained - I was dying to hear someone cut loose and something
'dirty'. I'm sure this record will also be a big seller but I think
that it is a real missed opportunity to do something different and that
Madeleine is probably going to have to get a new producer to make any
radical change to her sound.