Gardot, Melody: Absence (2012) - CD

Singer Melody Gardot is often compared to Norah Jones or Madeleine Peyroux. However, life experience apparently gave her something extra.

It' s a familiar story. When Melody Gardot was nineteen, she was hit by a car while riding a bike. The seriously injured student then ended up in hospital for many months, where she was treated for spinal and head injuries. It bears the consequences and pain practically to this day.

Everything bad is good for something, so while before the accident Melody sang only adopted jazz standards, during long-term rehabilitations she improved her guitar playing, but mainly began to write her own songs. It sounds like an American dream, but her songs have found their way to the waves of local radio and from there to the interest of major record companies. The Absence is her third studio album.

Although she still has some difficulty traveling, she sought inspiration for this novelty in the music of southern Europe and America. “I just got together one day and went,“ she described succinctly to The Telegraph. This time she was not alone on a trip to slightly different genre waters, although she composed most of the songs, but she was significantly helped (mainly by orchestral parts) by Heitor Pereira - a Brazilian guitarist and composer known mainly from the film industry.

More than pleasant is the knowledge that Melody Gardot did not take her global trip as the next in a series of interpretations of compositions by Antonio Carlos Jobim or Gilbert Gil. In fact, it' s not even a purely Latin-jazz album: Although The Absence relies on rhythmic borrowings from tango, bossa nova, or fada, it does not take these styles rigidly in any way. She is rather enchanted by the possibilities that the means of South American and South European music provide her and skillfully connects them with her own expression - growing out of blues and relaxed songwriting, as we already know from previous albums (like My One and Only Thrill).

The melodies are again accompanied by well-known musicians such as bassist John Leftwich, percussionist Paulihno DaCosta or drummers Jim Kelter and Peter Erskine, and it is clear that the overall production was more demanding (more strings, choirs of local singers). It' s nice that it didn' t detract from the singer' s songs for a certain compactness and fragility, which we' re used to with her.

The new album Melody Gardot does not mean a radical departure from the current work of a pop-jazz singer. Some of the songs could work on previous albums without anything, without her fan noticing anything “suspicious“. At The Absence, he thus keeps his face, absorbs various cosmopolitan ingredients and, above all, stays with the original work. A nice album not only for the hot summer. jazzman.

Playlist

CD
Mira / Amalia / So Long / So We Meet Again My Heartache / Lisboa / Impossible Love / If I Tell You I Love You / Goodbye / Se Voce Me Ama / My Heart Wont Have It Any Other Way / Iemanja (with hidden track)