From the vault: Madeleine Peyroux Careless Love

(Editor's note: Oddly enough I was in the process of working on a review for this album when I received a comment earlier wanting my opinion on this breakthrough album from the latest Jazz vocalist (if you count Norah Jones as being Jazz anyway) to take the nation by storm. So in response to that, I decided to go ahead and post the review for this album. Enjoy!)

There's room for improvement, but this album shows a lot of promise for Madeleine Peyroux's future

Madeleine Peyroux is actually a talent that has been around for some time, despite that however, this is only her second full length album in her near decade-long career. Immediately upon listening to her album, you'll surely notice that her voice is indeed similar to Billie Holiday's, but that's really as far as I'll go with that comparison, as there are far too many interpretive differences between the two for her to be considered to be directly akin (or the 21st century version of, if you will) to Billie Holiday. There are a number of strong tracks on this album, such as the first two tracks "Dance Me to the End of Love" and "Don't Wait Too Long," which are both playful and relatively light, and then the much darker gem of "Weary Blues from Waitin'" which hardly sounds like the original country creation that Hank Williams originally wrote, but rather a very heavy, blues song. This brings up one of the more problematic areas of Careless Love as some of the covered material, well, mainly the cover of Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars" does not really work. On the surface it seems equally daunting, but after repeated or close listens, it feels somewhat empty. The cover of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" works with Peyroux's conversation-like delivery, but overall, as the song goes on it feels more of a forced effort than anything else. Another example of a track that works, and possibly shows Peyroux's greatest potential is the song "I'll Look Around" which finds Peyroux at her most intimate, as her velvet-like voice floats wonderfully over the soft piano accompaniment. While this isn't a pure jazz album, for contemporary purposes it brings an awakening to a genre that's been dormant for quite sometime.

★★★¾