Glad Rag Doll

Diana Krall | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 2, 2012)
• Original Release Date: 2012
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Verve
• ASIN: B008FSCNTK
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (352 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #8 in Music > Broadway & Vocalists > Vocal Jazz
  • #8 in Music > Jazz > Vocal Jazz > General AAS
  • #42 in Music > Pop > Vocal Pop

Editorial Reviews

Diana Krall's extraordinary new album, 'Glad Rag Doll' is an exhilarating and adventurous exploration of new sounds, new instrumentation and new musicians. It stars a singer and piano player, filled with mischief, humour and a renewed sense of tenderness and intimacy.

The record reveals itself at that remarkable vanishing point in time where all music; swinging, rocking and taboo, collide with songs of longing, solace and regret. All are made new again in a vaudeville of Krall's own imagining.

It is at once a major departure and a natural progression for the gifted musician. Diana simply calls the album, "a song and dance record."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

115 of 130 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Melancholy is OK, but I prefer jazz to this October 11, 2012

By Rick loves jazz

Format:Audio CD

All musicians have to decide whether to play the same songs the same old way or whether to re-invent themselves periodically. With some, like John Coltrane, this is a continuous process, and so listeners come to expect something different with each album. With others, like Paul Desmond, he played the same way (or an approximation of it) his entire career. Sometimes, an artist with play one way for a while and then switch gears. Miles Davis comes to mind - he went from playing classic small group jazz with his original quintet, to modal jazz on Kind of Blue, to post-bop with the quintet with Wayne Shorter, et al, to fusion and so on.

Diana Krall has the tough job of deciding who she wants to be and whether to sing standards in a small group setting or whether to branch out. She has obviously chosen the latter, having recorded albums with a big band ("From This Moment On"), of originals ("The Girl in the Other Room") and with strings ("The Look of Love"). Glad Rag Doll is the latest effort to re-create Diana Krall.

This is not Krall's best effort. She makes a game attempt, but the instrumentation and arrangements do not showcase her voice or piano, and the songs have a limited emotional range. There is a "thump-thump" quality to the rhythm section which was probably intentional given the pre-bop nature of the songs being sung but given the musicians, is not done effectively. There is a lot of twangy guitar (and banjo and dobro) which is not going to be what Diana Krall's listeners want to hear.

The best songs on this album, not surprisingly, have the least thump-thump and twang. Glad Rag Doll, Prairie Lullaby, Here Lies Love and I Used to Love You are probably the best numbers on the album and allow Krall to sing in her breathy way without the distraction of too much thump and twang.

I suspect that this will be a controversial album in Krall's oevure and that she will seek to re-invent herself from time to time. I agree with reviewers who think that her best albums were recorded earlier when she played with her trio and did standards and straight-ahead jazz. Like many jazz artists who have had to go commercial for her record label, she still does mostly straight-ahead stuff in concert. I hope that Krall's next effort will be jazz.

48 of 57 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Did you people listen to the same CD as I did? October 9, 2012

By J. EROS

Format:Audio CD

I am very selective about the music I purchase. Diana Krall and T Bone Burnett's Glad Rag Doll is probably only the fourth or fifth purchase this year--it has been a lean year for albums worth purchasing. I like the album--a lot. It covers a lot of territory and it lifts my spirits and takes me back to a simpler time. I am confused about all the negative comments. Can't an artist explore and try new stuff? Must you have the same sound fed to you each time?

43 of 58 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Go back to the piano -- and to jazz, Diana. Puh-LEEZE!! November 17, 2012

By M. R. Traska

Format:MP3 Music

I'll say right up front that I've been a fan of Diana Krall's for almost as long as she's been recording. She has a gift for interpretation, no doubt, and that's important in jazz and blues. She has the chops, and she has the pipes. I've also no doubt that she can sing blues ... but this album of songs from the '20s and '30s is neither/nor. Rather, it sounds like she watched one too many episodes of Boardwalk Empire in a row, got depressed and wallowed in the fake-happy cynicism of the music of that era (especially as presented in that series, which worked there but doesn't here), then decided to record some while she was still feeling really bummed. Which left **me** bummed and wishing she'd return to her wonderful piano playing, if this is all we can expect from her vocal choices now.

Have I always liked her choices? No, not always, but I always respected them and understood what she was trying to do. Until now. Does it work this time? Not so much. A pretty cynical move putting her in lingerie, too, like she was one of the dance-hall girls back then; but I couldn't care less about the cover, really, as long as the music's good ... and this time, it's well done but still grossly underwhelming. She wasted herself on this.

Like a few other excellent pianists who discovered they could sing and garnered a much larger audience that way -- Nat Cole and Harry Connick Jr. come to mind -- Krall seems to have forgotten her piano playing (unlike, for example, the magnificent Shirley Horn). Krall has an inventive keyboard style that always pulls you in and delivers, whether she's playing jazz or blues, but it's gone or lost here amid all this heavy melancholia. I love her ballads, but not here. Instead of wrenching your heart, they simply drag you down. If you're disappointed in this, give a listen for comparison to All Night Long on Only Trust Your Heart, Clint Eastwood's Why Should I Care from When I Look In Your Eyes, or, for that matter, the previously recorded Garden In The Rain from Love Scenes -- which she did so beautifully on that album that I'm puzzled why she rerecorded it for this album with such morbid results. She knows how to do a heartbreaking song when she wants to; I'm thinking of Goodbye on the Charlie Haden Quartet West album Sophisticated Ladies. But this? Feh!

If Krall wanted something that called back to Prohibition or the Depression era, she'd have done better to have taken her cue from Lil Hardin Armstrong and Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Kid Ory or the piano players of the era: Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Willie 'The Lion' Smith, Art Tatum, Earl 'Fatha' Hines, Mary Lou Williams. Seriously. There was more than enough good music back then to make a suicidal album like this unnecessary.

In fact, the more I listen and think about it, the more I conclude that what all these songs wish they could sound like is the moving Cry Me A River from The Look of Love, which has the same sensibility as most of these songs but is much better done (and doesn't wallow in its misery). We know you can do it better, Diana ... so go back to the studio and show us, yes? This ain't it. Oh, and get a better set of sidemen, too; dump the twangy stuff and get back to a real jazz trio behind you.

Final grade: D for depressing. Buy one of her earlier ones instead.