Cassandra Wilson: Loverly

[Aggie87]

Due out tomorrow (6/10), Cassandra's new one, "Loverly".

For thunderbird, her 2006 Blue Note recording, vocalist Cassandra Wilson explored the outer reaches of jazz with a multilayered sonic approach piloted by pop producer T-Bone Burnett and supported by his A-team of studio musicians including guitarist Marc Ribot and drummer Jim Keltner. This time, Wilson ventures into another fascinating direction with Loverly, a tantalizing, rhythmically driven collection of jazz standards given new luster with a top-drawer band of friends that includes Marvin Sewell on guitar, Jason Moran on piano, Herlin Riley on drums, Lonnie Plaxico on bass, and Lekan Babalola on percussion, with special guest appearances by bassist Reginald Veal and trumpeter Nicholas Payton.

"I wanted to work with spare arrangements this time," says Wilson of Loverly, her first full album of standards since her 1988 JMT album Blue Skies. "I decided to dig back into standards with a small, compact group of musicians. I don’t record the typical jazz standards a lot, but I love them and that’s how I honed my craft. I studied the standards, listening to how other singers put their swing into them. But it’s hard to do standards. You can’t really sing them until you understand them."

Tracklist:

1. Lover Come Back to Me

2. Black Orpheus

3. Wouldn't It Be Loverly

4. Gone With the Wind

5. Caravan

6. 'til There Was You

7. Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

8. Arere

9. St. James Infirmary

10. Dust My Broom

11. The Very Thought of You

12. A Sleepin' Bee

Edited June 9, 2008 by Aggie87

[BFrank]

Have you heard it, Agg? I like "Blue Skies", but that was 20 years ago.

Here's a review from today's NYT.

June 9, 2008

Critics’ Choice

New CDs

CASSANDRA WILSON

“Loverly” (Blue Note)

When Cassandra Wilson made the all-standards album “Blue Skies” in 1988, such jazz tunes were a little more sacred than they are now. There was an innovation-versus-tradition argument in progress. Ms. Wilson was then an impossibly hip young singer making her name with a radical fringe that merged jazz improvisation with complicated funk (imagine that!). For her to record songs like “I’m Old Fashioned” and “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” — with a straight-ahead rhythm section, treating the songs with due respect and scat singing — amounted to decent frisson. It was a lovely record, too.

Great songs are always in short supply, but in the very best jazz, material becomes negligible. The band takes over and does whatever it does, dominating over authorship. Many always knew this, but more know it now, and know it deeply. So “Loverly,” Ms. Wilson’s new record that is nearly all jazz standards, isn’t conceptually jarring. But it’s good to see how far she, and we, have come in 20 years. And for whatever reasons — don’t give the songs all the credit — it’s her best work in a long time.

Back on “Blue Skies” you could hear Ms. Wilson assuming a crouch, meeting the demands of the songs. (She armed herself, too, with some of Betty Carter’s passionate phrasing. Good for you if you can do that.) Now she lets the songs come to her. Years of getting close to pop and touring with a hand drummer have accustomed her to finding a groove and a vamp first; the song can wait. And apart from the normatively swinging first and last songs of “Loverly” — “Lover Come Back to Me” and “A Sleepin’ Bee” — the song does wait. Ms. Wilson and her band, with piano (Jason Moran), guitar (Marvin Sewell), bass (Lonnie Plaxico or Reginald Veal), drums (Herlin Riley) and percussion (Lekan Babalola), figure out their rhythmic strategies up front, in a soup of barrelhouse piano, postmodernism, Cuban and African influences, folk and funk. It’s slow, chic and often extremely good.

The song list includes Lerner and Loewe’s “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” from “My Fair Lady”; one original, an Afro-Cuban chant called “Arere”; “Dust My Broom,” representing blues; and “St. James Infirmary,” representing, I guess, where jazz, folk and pop met a long time before Ms. Wilson started making records.

The rest are more like a jazz student’s idea of standards. There are two well-prepared duets, both killers: “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” with acoustic guitar, and “The Very Thought of You,” with acoustic bass.

Much of the music transmits the feeling that the engineer pressed the record button in the middle of a jam session in which everyone was happily hanging behind the beat. Occasionally you hear some kind of clinking, maybe from Ms. Wilson’s bracelet; she gooses the rhythm section with grunts, the way she might on a gig, or wanders off microphone and sings a few lines to the walls. Naturalism is the idea, but this is a beautifully constructed record, from Mr. Moran’s blenderized, genre-defying piano solos to Ms. Wilson’s judicious phrasing, using the full range of her double-smoked voice. BEN RATLIFF

[jazz1]

Here is another review,

by Karl Stark

Philadelphia Inquirer, June 8, 2008

Singer Cassandra Wilson, whose work often veers beyond jazz, cuts a session

largely of vintage standards for the first time since 1988. In her use of smears

and squishing of time, Wilson seems to be channeling Betty Carter and Nina

Simone.

Wilson gets spacey at times, swallowing lines and impersonating a horn in a

search for a novel take. The breathy obliqueness on "Gone With the Wind" doesn't

score much.

Wilson's pared-down take of "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" has more

energy, but Marvin Sewell's reverberating steel guitar sound proves distracting

on this duet, as it does elsewhere on the CD.

Where Wilson shows some pizzazz is on the funky remake of "St. James Infirmary."

There's no sidestepping the vibe here; Wilson cooks straight up. Likewise, "Dust

My Broom" is a righteous blues with true fire.

It's expected that Wilson, whose last CD, "Thunderbird," boasted scads of

programming and loops, should approach standards with a twist. But the classic

tunes often prove daunting enough to accentuate her less desirable habits

[Tom Storer]

Here's a review from today's NYT.

June 9, 2008

Critics’ Choice

New CDs

CASSANDRA WILSON

“Loverly” (Blue Note)

[...] Years of getting close to pop and touring with a hand drummer have accustomed her to finding a groove and a vamp first; the song can wait. And apart from the normatively swinging first and last songs of “Loverly” — “Lover Come Back to Me” and “A Sleepin’ Bee” — the song does wait.

This gives me pause. I'll be interested to hear it. I'm predicting I'll prefer "Blue Skies," but we'll see.

[jazz1]

and another one.

Cassandra Wilson: Loverly (Blue Note)

by Thomas H. Green

London Telegraph, June 7, 2008

Back in the Eighties, the American singer Cassandra Wilson was a founder of the

M-Base movement which mixed African culture with funk and avant-garde jazz. For

more than a decade, however, she's achieved commercial and critical success by

re-imagining unexpected material as bluesy jazz.

Her new album is ostensibly a straightforward collection of standards, even

tackling Wouldn't It Be Loverly from the musical My Fair Lady, but it also

embraces gentle experimentation grounded in the percussion of African drum

expert Lekan Babalola.

Thus Dixieland classic St James Infirmary becomes a rolling percussive groove

and the whole album thrives on jamming between piano and rhythm section.

Certainly easy on the ear, Loverly also nudges subtly and playfully at smooth

jazz listeners' expectations.

[Jazzmoose]

Wow...I can't wait to hear this version of St James Infirmary. But then I'm a sucker for that song anyway.

[Shawn]

Wow...I can't wait to hear this version of St James Infirmary. But then I'm a sucker for that song anyway.

You and me both, I've been meaning to try and learn that one on guitar...thanks for the reminder.

[Aggie87]

Have you heard it, Agg? I like "Blue Skies", but that was 20 years ago.

Not yet BF, but looking forward to it. I have Cassandra's "Sing Standards" comp that Verve put out a few years ago, which cherry-picks from Blue Skies and some of her other early releases. I haven't listened to it much though, for whatever reason (probably because it's a comp).

I didn't really enjoy some of her pre-BN stuff that I've picked up (the live album & Dance to the Drums), but I should probably try some of the other ones at some point.

I think this one will be interesting though, and I like that Jason Moran's on it as well.

[mikeweil]

It was hard to avoid hearing excerpts from Loverly on jazz radio shows over here featuring new releases since it came out.

I find Dust My Broom rather boring, full of second hand blues licks, Marvin Sewell being nothing as arousing as the guitar on the original, and Caravan was rather nicely tickling along, without really catching my attention.

I wouldn't buy a CD of her even if it had her doing a striptease bonus video ....

Edited June 10, 2008 by mikeweil

[jazz1]

and here is another review.

Amazing how many reviews you get once your famous.

It would be ideal if really good cd's were also reviewed.

Cassandra Wilson: Loverly (Blue Note)

by Christina Pazzanese

Boston Globe, June 10, 2008

Though Cassandra Wilson has done covers before -- everyone from Miles Davis to

the Monkees -- this is her first set of jazz standards since 1988's "Blue

Skies." Recorded in her hometown of Jackson, Miss., in a house where Wilson and

the band lived together, Wilson sounds warm and relaxed here, like the sassy

ringleader of a playful jam session that listeners are invited to drop in on,

but only briefly. As always, Wilson loves to toy with melody and phrasing, a

penchant that often yields delicious results. The well-worn "Caravan" rides a

funky African groove as Wilson's voice floats overhead. "Lover Come Back"

crackles with heat from Lonnie Plaxico's jaunty, jump-style bass. Backed only by

some raw acoustic guitar, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" is gorgeously

dark, while "Gone With the Wind," featuring lovely work from pianist Jason

Moran, is undeniably sexy. Wilson's smoky alto and doin'-it-my-way attitude are

pitch-perfect for the two blues classics here, Robert Johnson's "Dust My Broom"

and "St. James Infirmary," made famous by Louis Armstrong. But sometimes

Wilson's efforts to play with iconic melodies, as on "Til There Was You" or "The

Very Thought of You," fall just shy of the mark, no doubt frustrating

traditionalists

[seeline]

I've heard most of the album now, and though I think there are good things about it, I don't think jazz standards are where she does her best work, or where she's most comfortable.

Some of the best cuts on Blue Light 'Til Dawn and Belly of the Sun work (for me) because she's giving free rein to her own mixture of jazz, blues, cabaret-style singing (not the term I want, but I can't think of a better one right now), gospel and - big "and" - other African-derived musics. (From the Caribbean, Brazil, etc.)

I don't care for her last few albums, as they seem (to me) overproduced and just not a good fit for her ideas. As commercial discs, they're probably what her label wanted, though...

I wish she and Brandon Ross would work together again. Their concepts and arrangements worked - like the percussive pedal steel and conga combo on "Redbone" (Blue Light 'til Dawn). The plastic bucket percussion on her version of "The Weight" (Belly of the Sun) runs a close second to that, IMO.

Edited June 20, 2008 by seeline