Cassandra Wilson - Loverly
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Free Music Notes for Loverly
Free Music Review: Unpretentious yet masterly
Hit: 5 Stars
Cassandra Wilson at her best.
Wonderful, interesting interpretations of well-known songs with a team of musician who really bring out the best of Cassandra.
My favorite: Caravan! Rarely presented with such cool.
Contrary to some of the other reviewers I judge Ms Wilson's detached and apparently uncommitted way of delivering the songs as a great asset of this CD.
Free Music Review: Loverly
Hit: 5 Stars
This CD will go down as one of the best jazz CD's ever recorded!!! Please Buy It! Run don't walk!!!!Free Music Review: Classical Cassandra !
Hit: 5 Stars
Never heard these timeless classics done so superbly. No one like Cassandra Wilson !!Free Music Review: Many fine moments, some funky grooves.
Hit: 4 Stars
Cassandra's smoky alto remains one of the most beguiling voices in jazz and blues.
After it was wreathed in a high-tech production by the producer T. Bone Burnett on Thunderbird, she goes back to acoustic basics of traditional jazz vocals here, with a set almost entirely comprised of vintage tunes recorded with a small combo featuring the brilliant pianist du jour, Jason Moran and the guitar of Marvin Sewell.
"Loverly" was produced in a rented house in her Mississippi hometown, with assembled invited musician friends who got down to the business of recording then and there, making this recording so relaxed and personal that it feels like a live set in your own living room.
It's impressive to hear the class and character Cassandra has injected into these 20th century songs.
With the help of Yoruba percussionist Lekan Babalola she knits West African rhythms into stripped-down arrangements, featuring Lonnie Plaxico (bass), Jason Moran (piano) and Herlin Riley (drums).
The decisive player, however, is Nigerian percussionist Lekan Babalola, whose polyrhythmic flurries perk up Duke Ellington's "Caravan" and a version of "Gone With the Wind" whose elegant unison guitar and piano recalls Steely Dan.
He's at the heart of "Arere", inspired by the Yoruban god of willpower, on which Cassandra could be singing in a native dialect, or scatting.
"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" is a true eye-opener. Cassandra's voice is so deep and resonant it's tangible, and she tells her story of loneliness backed only by Marvin Sewell's silvery acoustic guitar. He reappears playing ethereal slide guitar on "Black Orpheus", supported by Cuban-sounding percussion and piano, under Cassandra's whispered, desolate vocals.
"The Very Thought of You", a sublime duet with guest bassist Reginald Veal, features a rhythmic solo and sinuous vocals.
It is the up-tempo tracks that succeed in turning sparks to flame here. A traddish version of "Lover Come Back To Me" smears Cassandra's mellifluous vocals across Jason Moran's wild piano playing and "Arere", the only original on the album, is a frenetic fusion of unstoppable, cascading rhythms. On "Caravan" too, hectic percussion tumbles over jumbled piano and guitar, with Cassandra's voice at the other side of the room one moment and eerily close the next.
For many, it's Wilson's blues singing that stands out and she invests warhorses such as "St James Infirmary" and "Dust My Broom with a funky vitality.
All in all, not quite a classic, but many fine moments.
Highlights: "Caravan", "St James Infirmary", "Gone With the Wind", and "Arere".
Free Music Review: She stamps her distinctive personality on familiar songs.
Hit: 4 Stars
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" (My Fair Lady (1956 Original Broadway Cast)), 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.
The title just about sums this up, really. It's a cracking album of top-drawer singing, and might just be the best album Wilson has recorded since her debut 15 years ago.
It finds her exploring the standards repertoire with relish and invention, helped by her old friends: guitarist Marvin Sewell, bassists Reggie Veal and Lonnie Plaxico, drummer Herlin Riley, and labelmate and pianist Jason Moran.
Cassandra Wilson's voice has matured into a wonderfully expressive instrument, full of smoky intensity and her way with a lyric is beguiling.
She finds new things to say on old songs like "Gone With the Wind" and the lovely "Black Orpheus".
Cassandra gets into funky form on "St James' Infirmary" and a raunchy "Dust My Broom".
Rush out and buy it.
You will love it!