Customer Reviews

Jane Monheit: The Season

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I dunno, I think if you're overly concerned about the cover photography and the other paraphenalia, you might just be missing what's most important about the recording, the music. And criticizing jazz singers for ornamenting the melody by adding melismas is quite simply ridiculous. I'm in full sympathy with those consumers frustrated by their inability to play the disc--get the regular CD, you don't need the extras. The music is enough!

Jane Monheit's The Season is quite simply the best Christmas CD I've heard in a long, long time. I have to admit that i'm not overly fond of the opening song, This Christmas--it's just a generic jazz arrangement with nothing special. But with the opening notes of Merry Christmas Darling the CD really picks up. Monheit has amazing timbral control of her voice, you can hear the smile in her voice, and the longing. The Man With the Bag gets a terrific arrangement and Monheit shows her rhythmic flexibility. Moonlight in Vermont follows--I suppose this is why the CD is called "The Season" instead of "The Christmas Season"--it's one of Monheit's quiet ballads, with some wonderfully subtle guitar work by Miles Okazaki. Next, Leroy Anderson's Sleighride gets one of its best interpretations ever, uptempo and jazzy and smart--a real gift for this overplayed warhorse. Another standard, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas gets another extraordinary performance--Monheit sings the introduction without any accompaniment, and the whole is incredibly touching. It's done at a quite slow tempo which lets Monheit use her timbral control to great effect--she really means the words she's singing. A medley of I Love the Winter Weather and I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm follows, making a great contrast with the previous song. The Christmas Waltz has some nice guitar and vibes work--again the contrasts between the arrangements and songs shows real musicianship. Speaking of contrasts, the highlight of the disc is I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day in a simple duet between Monheit and guitarist Okazaki--it's timely and touching, and nothing on Diana Krall's Christmas CD comes close to the emotional power of this performance. It's worth the purchase price of the CD for this 3 minute song alone. Santa Claus is Coming to Town gets a somewhat uptempo jazzy arrangement, with some very fun scat singing and melodic elaborations by Monheit. The CD closes with a song I'm not familiar with, My Grown Up Christmas List--again, it's so touching and emotionally gripping. This is a wonderful CD, a must-have for your collection. I'd recommend it even if you never celebrate Christmas--it's simply great music.

i'm not sure what all the fuss is about. the album is a fine seasonal production- nothing off the charts but very very listenable. i only bought the cd for about 7 bucks from BMG and its a steal at that price. i am somewhat biased having seen Monheit in concert on a trip to NYC and really enjoyed her style and delivery. buy it and you will find that you will play it every yule time season!

I first discovered Jane (yes, you'll find I'm late jumping on the bandwagon) while listening to her mesmerizing, hauting version of "Over the Rainbow" during the closing credits of an otherwise so-so film "Sky Captain..." Ever since, I sought out her music and found that, despite her youth, she's been in the jazz scene for quite some time! Her album of classic film covers "Taking A Chance On Love" is probably my most-played album on my iPod (was fortunate enough to purchase the album with two exclusive tracks "I Should Care" and "I Wish I Were In Love Again")... so now, I'm so excited that I've got tickets to one of her shows in The O.C., and then to find that her latest album is a collection of Moheit-ized holiday songs is just...Yay!!!

Alas. The only reason this doesn't get the full five stars? Uh, can Sony make it possible to make DualDiscs iPod compatible? Geez. I know Sony's got pod envy, but good lord, make your discs compatible!!!

I know...you've heard it before. But honestly, this is the best Christmas album I have ever heard. I love every song on the thing. My family and I took a trip to New York City the year it was released. From South Carolina to New York is a long time in the car and both my kids 7 and 3 at the time, learned it by heart and still look forward to hearing it every Christmas. Yes, even the now 13 year old thinks it is cool and the best.

I really enjoyed the music, once I resigned myself to playing it on my DVD player when the CD would not play for me. I was disappointed the CD would not play. If I had known there would be a problem, I would have just ordered the regular CD.

Jane Monheit has some classic Christmas tunes, as well as some lesser-known ones, such as "The Man With the Bag" which I thoroughly enjoy. I don't find the melisma as bothersome as some other reviewers do. It doesn't seem distracting and allows her to make the songs her own.

Just for fun, I checked out the "live" performances and was unimpressed. With so many music videos that have high production value, her videos feel gimmicky at best and simply cannot compete. In addition, her lip-syncing seems amateurish. I cannot recommend this feature at all, thus my two star rating on this item. My advice: by the regular CD.

I plan to send this dual disc back, if Amazon will accept it, and get the regular CD. That way I can listen to it in my car and have the ability to put in on shuffle with some of my other favorite holiday tunes, which is why I bought it in the first place. I'm sure her CD will become one of my family's holiday staples.

The dual disc does not contain malware. The cd is great. It is not fair for reviewers to unload on the performer, when the recording company is at fault. It is a good thing that many of the reviewers that do such a thing are not members of our justice system

Ho ho ho, what do you know... the two "it girls" of vocal jazz both released holiday CDs this year within days of each other... first it was Jane Monheit with the ambiguously titled "The Season"... then came Diana Krall's aptly named "Christmas Songs." So who emerges victorious in this battle of the Christmas jazz divas?

The first thing to consider, of course: who has the most gratuitous glamour shot on the album cover? Diana's suggestive and/or very uncomfortable pose in some kind of lawn chair wearing a billowy shiny green dress (strategically revealing as much leg as possible) is a real contender... but Jane's heavily airbrushed/photoshopped snow bunny/nymphette get-up (complete with floating bubbles for no apparent reason) is the clear winner in this category.

On to the tunes... I have to look closely at Jane's disc before putting it in the CD player... it's one of them newfangled "DualDisc" deals with a CD on one side and DVD on the other -- you can only tell the difference by looking closely at the tiny little print around the hole in the middle... once you've figured that out, you know you're in for a rocky ride when the soft-rock contempo-easy backbeat of "This Christmas" kicks in... you gotta give Ms. Monheit credit for trying to come up with some fresh material here, but this is some really cringe-inducing stuff... things don't get much better with "Merry Christmas Darling," a comatose, melody-free bit of nothing featuring a tinkly electric piano solo and overdubbed backing vocals. Things pick up on the more jazzy swingin' tracks such as "Man with the Bag" and "Sleighride"... however on ballads like "Moonlight in Vermont" and "Have Yourself a Merry Litte Christmas," Jane reveals a disturbing tendency toward Mariah-esque melisma that will make your skin crawl. The guitar/vocal rendition of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" is nice, but next thing you know you're awash in the treacly jazz/pop crossover of "My Grown Up Christmas List" and heading straight for the eggnog... I do give Jane a lot of credit, though, for including the somewhat neglected holiday classic "The Christmas Waltz" (one that Diana apparently overlooked or just doesn't like...)

What about the DVD side of this "revolutionary DualDisc,"? Wow, folks... it's amateur hour at Epic Records... a faceless actor in the shadows pretending to be a radio host interviews Jane (looking refreshingly like a normal person) about a few of the songs on the album, interspersed with badly lip-synched "videos" of those songs which consist entirely of soft-focus waist-to-head shots of Ms. Monheit uncomfortably hamming it up for the camera.. yikes... oh, and you can also listen to the entire album in "enhanced stereo" (whatever that is)... the best plan is to simply skip the flip side... better yet, save yourself a few bucks and get the normal CD version if you intend to buy this album despite its weaknesses (when it's available again, that is: the original discs were recalled as part of the Sony copy protection "rootkit" debacle...)

Decision: Diana Krall over Jane Monheit by a (gentle) knockout...(see my Amazon review of "Christmas Songs" for details...)

I had to return this album to Amazon after receiving an emil from them stating that it contained Sony malware.

Poor Jane! Caught up with these creeps!

I love Jane, but I'm going to have to return this CD because the DualDisc will not play in either my car or on my computer. Worthless to me, I have no idea if the music's good or not, since I can't get it to play.

Jane Monheit's debut album was beguiling, and this outing has a few moments that shine, but for the most part she has grown increasingly absorbed in making hip sounds and doodling around the scale Sarah Vaughn-like: sound without meaning.

On this album, for the most part, she could be an alien replicating human language as an experiment in intergalactic communication. Where's the emotion? Where's the feeling? Ah, youth! She may have entered the great wilderness of artistic development which in the old days of show business went unrecorded. One day, perhaps, she will start concentrating on the meaning of the words she's singing again, and stop sounding like an ultra hip midi file.