Customer Reviews

Love Is Blue

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

 

 

As a Jazz DJ on community radio constantly searching to avoid the too familiar, I have my finger on the pulse of female jazz singers throughout the United States, and the current crop, most of whom are unknown to the general public, is really outstanding. I mean real jazz singers, not Nora Jones. Jackie Allen is awfully close to the top of the list. This latest album only reaffirms the emotional depth, style, inventiveness, and sophistication of this marvelous artist who, after many years honing her craft in the mid-west, is beginnng to get a little of the recognition she deserves. Highly recommended.

The afternoon starts sunny, then gets dark.

Now here is a Pop Jazz Vocal that draws me in. Sensual. Sexy. I think it's Jazz! Now why did she say that?

Really a concept album, but it's hard to say what the concept is - relationships gone wrong? Love the first track, about love in the afternoon, it's warm and sunny like brandy. The mood seems to get darker throughout. "Moon of Deception" is moody, By "Turnin Round" she sounds obsessive, almost like Patricia Barber. A slowed down "Taste of Honey", miles from the Beatles. Ends with a torchy rendition of the ultimate torch song, "I'll be Around".

For the life of me I can't understand why this album isn't more popular. I guess people haven't heard it and it doesn't get airplay. So it's a vicious circle.

Contrary to what's said below, this CD is a much more energy, more involving and captivating album than Diana Krall's listless "Girl in the Other Room". In fact, it has everything DK's new album is missing. Slowed, without dropping off. Has a lot more heart!

4 1/2 to 5 stars performance, on my tough grading system. well recorded. Would get 5 stars, if it were more popular. One of the best of the year. It grows on you. A find! See my recommended list!

Sometimes the line between jazz and progressive rock is really thin. Consider, for example, Ginger Baker's album, ca. 1994, with Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden ("Goin' Back Home"): jazz or rock? Or consider Joni Mitchell's "Night Ride Home" and "Turbulent Indigo" albums from the early '90's: jazz or rock?

This album straddles the same thin line. But I'm no purist: I really like the Ginger Baker and Joni Mitchell albums; and I really like this one, too.

Jackie Allen is a singer who usually sounds like Sheryl Crow, but when in her upper register, sounds purer than that. Her performance is enhanced by her band, a group of superb musicians. In "Men in My Life", John Moulder (g), Hans Sturm (b) and Dane Richeson (per) proved themselves to be very proficient jazz musicians. Here, they prove themselves to be very proficient rock musicians. Let's just say they are very proficient.

And whereas the pianist in "Men" was the wonderful Ben Lewis, here the pianist is the wonderful Laurence Hobgood, ordinarily Kurt Elling's accompanist. He provides the highlight of the album, an arrangement of the title track complete with his wispy solo. The original popular version was that soupy thing done by the Paul Mariat Orchestra, ca. 1968. This version is so dark that it takes awhile to figure out the song; but the darkness fits the words to a tee. To say the least, it is a vast improvement over the popular original.

Other highlights: a similar treatment of "A Taste of Honey", which is likewise a quantum improvement over the familiar version done in the '60's by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass; Hans Sturm's "Turnin' Round," a Wallace Stephens type of poem with variations on the word and syllable "turn" in just about every imaginable concept to a heavy bass backbeat in A minor; the one jazz standard, Alec Wilder's wonderful "I'll Be Around," complete with some very tasteful guitar licks from Moulder; and a terrific original, Jackie Allen's "Moon of Deception." The more I listen to this album, the more I may be convinced that this is actually its highlight: it ought to be a "standard in the making."

Truthfully, this whole album initially hit me at 4 and 1/2. But I like it the more I hear it; and until Ms. Allen becomes better known, I'll upgrade her to 5. If you liked Diana Krall's recent "The Girl in the Other Room", you'll probably like this album even more, given the similarities between the two. One thing I guarantee you: if you play this c.d. for someone who has never heard it and never heard of Jackie Allen, they'll never guess it in a million years. RC

It's been so long since I've heard a "concept album" of the kind the (...) used to produce that LOVE IS BLUE caught me completely off guard. After her success with THE MEN IN MY LIFE, which featured fresh interpretations of some very well known pop tunes, the song selections on Allen's new CD: a couple of '60s instrumentals, a new Annie Lennox song, the chestnut "I'll Be Around" and originals by Allen and members of her ensemble struck me as eccentric. But anyone who has heard Jackie Allen perform live can attest to the way she commands a room with a Largo tempo and a meditative lyric. The combination of emotional vulnerability, instinctive musicality and the sheer beauty of her voice is a potent combination. Producer Rob Mathes, who has worked with Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole, Sade, and a host of other pop performers has capitalized on that strength for a first person narrative of a doomed love affair told from the perspective of the woman left behind. The romance that begins with the temptations of a "Lazy Afternoon" and ends with the stiff-upper-lip farewell of "I'll Be Around" is so compelling because its protagonist is seductive ("You Become My Song"), sensual ("Taste of Honey"), independent ("Go"), optimistic ("Here Today"), playful ("The Performer", "Turnin' Round"), self-aware ("Pavement Cracks", "Love is Blue"), and incurably romantic ("Moon of Deception"). Give yourself the time to listen to this CD from start to finish and, far from blue, you will be exhilarated by its emotional impact.

This is my first exposure to Jackie Allen and I love it. What a wonderful voice. The music is tasteful and restrained yet filled with passion. I encourage everyone to have a listen. It's better everytime I hear it.

Jackie Allen's is one of the most distinctive, inimitable voices on the scene today, as musicianly and versatile as it is intimate and sexy. If a program and instrumentation such as this wins her the larger audience she richly deserves, I'm all for it.

As for the program, it's of a decidedly monochromatic blue hue--owing much to the influence of Joni Mitchell, Melissa Manchester, Tori Amos, Carly Simon, and singers in that eclectic area outside of the "Great American Songbook." Nothing necessarily wrong with that. Sinatra could put out albums made up exclusively of "suicide songs" ("Only the Lonely," "In the Wee Small Hours," "No One Cares," "September of My Years") and transform them into breathtaking elegy. But he was also served by the ingenious harmonic ambivalence of Cole Porter and Harold Arlen, the lyric poetry of Lorenz Hart and John Mercer, the orchestral expressiveness of Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins. Consequently, the mood did not begin to wear on me as I confess it does on the present collection, where modality replaces shifting harmonies and recitative supplants verse.

In all fairness, Jackie does include a couple of genuine standards ("Lazy Afternoon" and "I'll Be Around") and a couple that probably don't deserve to be ("Love Is Blue" and "Taste of Honey"). But the arrangements, orchestrations, and approach tend to minimize differences, contrasts and tensions in the material.

There's a jazz sensibility about her approach to all of the songs, as rightly recognized by those reviewers familiar with her previous work. But perhaps in the interest of catching the attention of new and younger ears, it's best not to tell.