KATIE MELUA: "The Ultimate Collection"

Original released on CD Digipak BMG 538433672

(EU 2018, October 5)

EVA CASSIDY Complete Perfomance At The Blues Alley Jazz Club, Georgetown, D.C.

Original released on double CD (+DVD) Blix Street G2-10209

(UK 2015, November 13)

Eva Cassidy's performance at the Blues Alley jazz club has become musical history. Twenty years on, experience for the first time every song recorded on the night of the 3rd January 1996. "Nightbird" is Eva Cassidy’s ultimate tour-de-force - 31 songs recorded in one night at the Blues Alley jazz club in Georgetown, DC. Encompassing the full spectrum of Eva’s gospel, blues, jazz and folk roots, "Nightbird" showcases the breadth and depth of one of the world’s finest singers. The recordings have been remixed and remastered from the original tapes resulting in the most sonically engaging Eva Cassidy release to date. Of the 31 songs, 12 are previously unreleased including the title track "Nightbird" as well as the jazz standards "It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)" and "Fever".

Of the 12 unreleased tracks, 8 are previously unheard songs. These include "Son of a Preacher Man", "Route 66", "Late in The Evening", "Baby I Love You" and "Caravan". Quite how Eva Cassidy is able to take songs we've all heard dozens of times ("Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Over The Rainbow" etc) and put entirely her own deeply soulful slant on them is incredible. Whether she is singing jazz, pop, folk or blues, she is totally convincing, and absolutely note and pitch perfect. A very rare talent indeed. The black and white DVD only serves to enhance the intensity of her performance. Although black and white, the sound is crystal clear. Praise also for her delicate guitar work, and a very accomplished and professional band. What more can I say than "phenomenal"? (in Amazon)

ERIC CLAPTON: "Forever Man"

Original released on Triple CD Reprise 549134-2

(US 2015, April 28)

As the first compilation covering Eric Clapton's Reprise/Warner work since 2007's "Complete Clapton", 2015's "Forever Man" is the third collection to focus specifically on these recordings from the '80s, '90s, and 2000s, and it's by far the most extensive, weighing in at two CDs in its basic edition and three in its deluxe. The difference between the two is the addition of a disc of "Blues," a nice addition to the "Studio" and "Live" discs of the collection. These themes make sense on paper but they're a little odd in practice, with the Studio selections hopscotching between eras and the live heavy on new millennial selections. Often, the length highlights how light "Forever Man" is on hits: "Tears in Heaven," "I've Got a Rock N Roll Heart," "Forever Man," "Change the World," "My Father's Eyes," "Pretending," "Bad Love," "It's in the Way That You Use It," and the unplugged "Layla" are all here, but the sequencing suggests how the '70s hits are missing (or present in new live versions). It is hardly a botched collection - in pure consumer terms, this delivers a lot of bang for the buck - but it winds up asking more questions than it answers. (in AllMusic)

                                          

"Feiticeira" By LUIS REPRESAS & MANUEL REBELO

Tender Stacey

Original released on CD Sony Okeh 88875156772

(EU, 2015)

Stacey Kent has always delivered her music tenderly and has shone best on standards from the Great American Songbook. Thus, it's appropriate that she returns to the pages of the Great American Songbook and performs some of its most romantic ballads with only a guitar, a bass fiddle and an occasional woodwind. However, two of her three accompanists are tried and tested musicians. Alternating between the saxophone and the flute is Stacey's longtime accompanist and husband, Jim Tomlinson, while the guitarist is Brazilian master Roberto Menescal himself. The performances here stay true to the tender theme of the album. Even when a swing beat is injected into standards like "Tangerine" and "No Moon at All", the mood remains warm and cozy while the rest of the ballads in the album also contribute to the after-hours feel of the album which is perfect for de-stressing after a hard day's work. Although the arrangements do the album justice by remaining original, Stacey's mostly straightforward readings of these standards with a thinner voice (due to aging) lack that certain zest which jazz albums usually possess. (in AllMusic)

A Lost and Found ROY ORBISON Album

Original released on CD Universal B0023169-02

(US 2015, December 4)

“One of the Lonely Ones” - recorded in 1969, this 12-track Roy Orbison album has never before been available to the public. This a completely unreleased ‘new’ Roy Orbison studio album, recently discovered by his sons. Rock critic Ken Emerson once wrote about the crescendo of Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over” «his love, his life, and indeed the whole world seemed to be coming to an end – not with a whimper, but with an agonized, beautiful bang». The sound of Roy Orbison’s voice is one of the most singularly beautiful things in rock and pop music. It is not just his famed vocal range, his voice had a tone like no one else’s, and he was equally comfortable hitting the high and the low notes and invigorating those in between. He specialized in ballads, dramatic ones, sweeping as well and quiet ones, and his reading and understanding of them was carefully in unison with what he knew he could do with them with that unique instrument that his voice was, and still is when you listen to it today. There is ample proof of this on this new album that was not released at the time. Though there are no crescendos of the magnitude of the finale of “It’s Over”, there are certainly examples of perfect matches of singer, voice and song. One is “Sweet Memories”, a Mickey Newbury song.

Roy’s vocals turn what could have been self-pity into strength and beauty. He must have seen a kindred spirit in Mickey Newbury, for he successfully bent a number of his songs into expressions of his own style: there is “Leaving Makes the Rain Come Down”, also on this album, and one of Roy’s best 70s recordings “I Remember the Good”, “Here Comes the Rain Baby”, which was used as B-side, and a couple of songs on the album “Many Moods”. Two other examples of perfect matches are the title track, written by Orbison-Dees, and “I Will Always”, a Don Gibson song. “Say No More” and “After Tonight” are examples of the sweeping ballads that Roy sings with ease and full use of his range. The two songs are interestingly by Sammy King, the person who wrote a very different kind of song for Roy, “Penny Arcade”. “Laurie” and “Give Up”, two mid-tempo songs, are almost playful, virtuoso demonstrations of his lithe vocals. “The Defector” and “Little Girl (in the Big City)”, both good, strong songs, are social commentaries, not a genre much developed by Roy, though “Southbound Jericho Parkway” from the same period was somewhat in that vein too. The two remaining songs are a beautiful rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and an effective up-tempo song “Child Woman, Woman Child”, which could have been picked as a single at the time. On the whole an inspired album that bears comparison with the best of his albums. (in Amazon)

MEGHAN TRAINOR - "Better When I'm Dancing"

ELVIS IS BACK AGAIN!

Original released on CD RCA 88875140832

(2015, October 30)

Take Her Home Tonight

Original released on LP Verve 0602537905928

(EU 2015, February 2)

Diana Krall paid tribute to her father on "Glad Rag Doll", the 2012 album sourced from his collection of 78-rpm records, and, in a sense, its 2015 successor "Wallflower" is a companion record of sorts, finding the singer revisiting songs from her childhood. Like many kids of the 20th century, she grew up listening to the radio, which meant she was weaned on the soft rock superhits of the '70s - songs that earned sniffy condescension at the time but nevertheless have turned into modern standards due to their continual presence in pop culture (and arguably were treated that way at the time, seeing cover after cover by middlebrow pop singers). Krall does not limit herself to the songbook of Gilbert O'Sullivan, Jim Croce, the Carpenters, Elton John, and the Eagles, choosing to expand her definition of soft rock to include a previously unrecorded Paul McCartney song called "If I Take You Home Tonight" (a leftover from his standards album "Kisses on the Bottom"), Bob Dylan's "Wallflower," Randy Newman's "Feels Like Home," and Neil Finn's "Don't Dream It's Over," a song from 1986 that has been covered frequently in the three decades since. "Don't Dream It's Over" slides into this collection easily, as it's as malleable and timeless as "California Dreamin'," "Superstar," "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word," or "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)," songs that are identified with specific artists but are often covered successfully. 

Krall's renditions rank among those successes because she's understated, never fussing with the melodies but allowing her arrangements to slink by in a deliberate blend of sparseness and sophistication. It's an aesthetic that helps transform the Eagles' "I Can't Tell You Why" and 10cc's "I'm Not in Love," singles that are as successful as much for their production as their song, into elegant torch songs, yet it doesn't do much for Newman's pedestrian "Feels Like Home," nor does it lend itself to the loping country of "Wallflower," which may provide the name for this album but feels like an uninvited guest among these majestically melodic middle-of-the-road standards. These stumbles are slight and, tellingly, they put into context Krall's achievement with "Wallflower": by singing these songs as sweet and straight as the dusty old standards on "Glad Rag Doll" or the bossa nova on 2009's "Quiet Nights", she demonstrates how enduring these once-dismissed soft rock tunes really are. (Thomas Erlewine in AllMusic)

A HUNDRED PERCENT FRANK