Madeleine Peyroux: HALF THE PERFECT WORLD

[ghost of miles]

Just got a promo here at the station, and after one quick listen, I think I can say with confidence that if you liked CARELESS LOVE, you'll like this one too. Mood & sensibility very similar... Sam Yahel on keyboards this time, though Larry Goldings does pop up on a couple of tracks. Covers of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, some co-written originals, and a couple of standards ("Smile" and "The Summer Wind"). Nothing grabbed me quite as immediately as "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" or some of the other tracks on CARELESS LOVE, but "Everybody's Talkin'" ( originally from MIDNIGHT COWBOY--I just played Armstrong's version of this on a show we taped the other day) and "Once In a While" (co-written original) sounded very good the first time around.

[RDK]

I assume then that they finally found her?

[RonF]

Just got a promo here at the station, and after one quick listen, I think I can say with confidence that if you liked CARELESS LOVE, you'll like this one too. Mood & sensibility very similar... Sam Yahel on keyboards this time, though Larry Goldings does pop up on a couple of tracks. Covers of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, some co-written originals, and a couple of standards ("Smile" and "The Summer Wind"). Nothing grabbed me quite as immediately as "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" or some of the other tracks on CARELESS LOVE, but "Everybody's Talkin'" ( originally from MIDNIGHT COWBOY--I just played Armstrong's version of this on a show we taped the other day) and "Once In a While" (co-written original) sounded very good the first time around.

[Van Basten II]

Great studio artist, lame live performer, i mostly enjoyed her first one Dreamland

[RonF]

Great studio artist, lame live performer, i mostly enjoyed her first one Dreamland

I haven't seen her but a good friend saw her recently in Denver at the Paramount Theater - said she was very impressive live with a good band. Different strokes. Careless Love is thumbs up. Half the Perfect World - need to spend some time with.

Edited August 22, 2006 by RonF

[Julielyn]

Great studio artist, lame live performer, i mostly enjoyed her first one Dreamland

I haven't seen her but a good friend saw her recently in Denver at the Paramount Theater - said she was very impressive live with a good band. Different strokes. Careless Love is thumbs up. Half the Perfect World - need to spend some time with.

I saw her last year - no new stuff, but if she's still got it... then I can't wait!

[king ubu]

I've heard most of her Vienna Jazz Fest 2006 gig on austrian radio and thought it was terrific. Band (incl. Sam Yahel-org, Matt Penman-b, Jenny Scheinman-violin) was indeed great, but she was good as well, I thought.

[Van Basten II]

Saw her, at the time of Dreamland, she looked stoned on stage. She was back at the Festival two years ago, most people i know who went told me that she was a big disapointment. The few critics who reviewed her show weren't quite favorable also.

If she improved, good for her.

[Lazaro Vega]

"Everybody's Talkin'". Was that sung by Glenn Campbell?

Ghost, where is Louis Armstrong's version of that?

[robert h.]

"Everybody's Talkin'". Was that sung by Glenn Campbell?

Ghost, where is Louis Armstrong's version of that?

It's a Harry Nilsson song.

[ghost of miles]

"Everybody's Talkin'". Was that sung by Glenn Campbell?

Ghost, where is Louis Armstrong's version of that?

LOUIS ARMSTRONG & HIS FRIENDS, his next-to-last album. BMG/Bluebird reissued it on CD a couple of years ago.

[RonF]

"Everybody's Talkin'". Was that sung by Glenn Campbell?

Ghost, where is Louis Armstrong's version of that?

It's a Harry Nilsson song.

Actually, it's a Fred Neil song that Nilsson covered in the movie Midnight Cowboy.

[Dr. Rat]

I'd say the tone is pretty distinct from the last one too with the Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits covers. Don't think there's a hit on this one, but it's a solid follow-up to her last one--might even be better, we'll see how it wears.

--eric

[Werf]

I'd say the tone is pretty distinct from the last one too with the Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits covers. Don't think there's a hit on this one, but it's a solid follow-up to her last one--might even be better, we'll see how it wears.

--eric

It sounds jazzier than the last one, too. Probably because the presence of Gary Thomas and Sam Yahel.

I listened to it last night, and enjoyed most of it. It does seem to suffer from the disease that many recordings have, since CDs changed the biz: it's too long. I'd lose three of the tunes (not sure which ones, though--give me a few listens).

[Werf]

http://www.jazzpolice.com/content/view/5027/2/

I just stumbled across this, sorry if it's old news.

[Lazaro Vega]

Hank Williams "Weary Blues" was the pick from "Careless Love," as well as her "Hesitation Blues" from Larry Golding's record on Palmetto. The similarity to Billie is creepy. When I listen to "Everybody's Talking" it leads to more postmodern cheese in a jazz sauce, Randy Johnston's version of The Carpenter's "Close To You" or that new Gilman Trio boogie and bop version of Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." What else? Patricia Barber's "Summer Samba." Shirley Horn's version of "The Look of Love" ends it, the final word on jazzmopolitan kitsch.

Shirley delves deeper into the drama of that song by playing with the time...she says to the set, experiment over, drag this pop all the way back to jazz.

Edited August 26, 2006 by Lazaro Vega

[ghost of miles]

Madeleine Peyroux interviewed

A Singer Oblivious to Fashion, but Not to Life

by Stephen Holden

New York Times, September 12, 2006

The jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux has a Mona Lisa voice and a personality to

match. As she delicately swings the standard "Smile" on her new album, "Half the

Perfect World" (Rounder), you can read whatever emotions you want in her sly,

enigmatic interpretation. She is either suppressing a secret smile or holding

back tears. Or both. Riding on a 30's folk-jazz lilt, her timeless

interpretation floats into the ether like a wisp of milkweed.

"Somebody called up the other day and said, 'Every time I hear that song it just

makes me cry -- it's the saddest song on the record,'" Ms. Peyroux recalls over

lunch in a small French restaurant near her apartment in Brooklyn. "It made me

think of the Bill Moyers 'Faith and Reason' program in which he asked Richard

Rodriguez why he wrote such sad books. And he replied that he thought Americans

are actually very sad under the surface. I know my intentions were poetic, and

there's an ambiguity to what it means, but I didn't mean it to be the saddest

song on the record." She laughs.

Wearing a black shirt, her hair parted in the middle, with little or no makeup,

Ms. Peyroux is as mysterious a figure as her music. As oblivious to fashion in

her austere appearance as in her singing with its powerful echoes of Bessie

Smith and Billie Holiday, she suggests a latter-day hippie without the

stereotypical 60's trappings of hippiedom.

There is no jivey argot in her conversation and not a trace of

anti-Establishment smugness in her attitude. She regards the world with a

steady, wide-eyed gaze through which tinges of amusement flicker.

Personal honesty is extremely important to her, she says, then qualifies that by

admitting that she's shyer than she would like to be. That translates into a

person who is forthright but not readily forthcoming.

Born in Athens, Ga., to a bohemian academic family, she has few memories of the

South but recalls that her parents, whom she describes as "hippies," didn't fit

in their social environment. When she was 6, her father, a teacher at the

University of Georgia, born in New Orleans, moved the family to Brooklyn because

he wanted to pursue acting. When her parents divorced, she moved, at 13, to

Paris with her mother.

Having been exposed as a child to Johnny Cash, Robert Johnson and Louis

Armstrong from her father's record collection, she discovered a new musical

horizon abroad.

"Music for me has always been a link to understanding and relating to people,

and in Paris I felt like a real outcast," she recalls. "My epiphany came from

seeing street musicians there. This was real life as opposed to listening to

great records."

Ms. Peyroux, now 32, said she was 15 when she joined a band of street musicians

who traveled around playing little-known country-blues songs from the 1930's.

When the band got a job in a jazz club, she forsook school to remain with it for

the next three years. It was during this period, she said, that she soaked up

the music of Smith, Holiday and (from her mother's records) Edith Piaf.

"These women actually spoke their own stories," she said. "Whether they wrote

the song or not, they transformed the material and gave it a dramatic

perspective. It was more than acting. They were hypnotic."

Ms. Peyroux disagrees with a reporter's suggestion that Holiday wallowed in a

prefeminist stew of romantic masochism.

"I read a book by Angela Davis in which she connects blues women and black

feminism," she said. "She describes the power of these women singing about

domestic violence or abuse as feminist, because they touched on a subject that

was taboo. Billie Holiday successfully battled an amazing amount of things. She

was a real champion for black musicians at a time when jazz clubs were

segregated. By stating so honestly what she was suffering through and putting it

on the table as an artist, she gave us something to do with it."

A French record producer, Yves Beauvais, heard her in a New York club and then

followed her to Paris; he signed her to Atlantic Records and co-produced her

blues-oriented first album, "Dreamland," in 1996. After a vocal crisis that

required surgery, she took a sabbatical from performing. Dropped by Atlantic and

briefly signed to Columbia, then dropped before making a record, she was

eventually approached by Rounder, the Boston independent label for which she

made her second album, "Careless Love," released in 2004.

Working with a new producer, Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell's former husband) and a

new group of musicians, she refined a style that blends elements of jazz, folk

and blues into a delicate quasi-30's and -40's period sound that is

sophisticated but feels homemade. Though completely outside the pop mainstream

the record has sold more than 400,000 copies.

Led off by "Dance Me to the End of Love" by Leonard Cohen, "Careless Love"

broadened Ms. Peyroux's focus to include contemporary songs. And on "Half the

Perfect World," made with the same producer and musicians, the title song was

also written by Mr. Cohen (with Anjani Thomas).

Although Ms. Peyroux has forsaken early blues on her third album, its more

modern songs have the same blend of ethereality and early-20th-century roots

consciousness as those on "Careless Love." Familiar titles include Tom Waits's

"(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night," Joni Mitchell's "River" (a duet

with K. D. Lang), Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," and most unlikely of all,

the Sinatra hit, "Summer Wind," which is transformed from a lounge standard into

an intimate diaristic meditation. She wrote three songs with her producer and

Jesse Harris (a Norah Jones collaborator) and a fourth with Mr. Klein and Walter

Becker, of Steely Dan.

If the casual listener might still mistake Ms. Peyroux for Holiday on occasion,

the closer attention one pays, the more apparent are their differences. Ms.

Peyroux's stealthy phrasing, which lingers behind the beat, may be pure Holiday,

but the substance of her voice is more fragile and not as earthy. She is softly,

wistfully dreaming out loud.

The common denominator in everything she sings is a current of sadness. Hers is

a lonely voice. From "River," to "Everybody's Talkin'," to "Half the Perfect

World," which glides on a bossa nova pulse, many of the songs evoke a desire to

escape.

Asked about the source of her sadness, she says it is something she felt growing

up in a family troubled by alcoholism and domestic strife in which these

troubles were rarely brought out in the open. On top of that, the nine years she

spent abroad contributed to her sense of feeling different and apart.

"I know that at a certain point I came back to the United States and realized I

could see things from the outside in," she says, but adds that music has been a

path out of that isolation.

"It's the center of making a philosophy of life," she says, "of joining forces

in a small community to do something interesting."

[kulu se mama]

was anyone else listening to NPR this morning?

was that madeline payroux being interviewed at 10 'til the hour?

i checked their website, and that appears to be the case, but she sang different songs than what is mentioned on their website.

[Man with the Golden Arm]

oh, so that wasn't David Sedaris.

[chris olivarez]

was anyone else listening to NPR this morning?

was that madeline payroux being interviewed at 10 'til the hour?

i checked their website, and that appears to be the case, but she sang different songs than what is mentioned on their website.

That was her. I found the interview enjoyable.

[kulu se mama]

That was her. I found the interview enjoyable.

thanks.

i tried to listen to the entire interview from NPR's website, but there must be something wrong with my computer.

i couldn't get it to play.

i loved the songs that she sang, but they don't appear to be on any of her cd's.

i have her first 2, but i've not yet purchased her new one.

[mikeweil]

I had a cursory listen at a shop, but somehow it didn't grab me like the previous one instantly did .....

[Teasing the Korean]

oh, so that wasn't David Sedaris.