Madeleine Peyroux - Half the Perfect World
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Music CD Cover Artist: Madeleine Peyroux Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 2006-09-12 Music Label: Rounder / UMGD Soundtracks:
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Free Music Notes for Half the Perfect World Album
Free Music Review: Madeleine Peyroux's Nearly-As-Luminous New Album
Hit: 4 Stars
Madeleine Peyroux's excellent new album 'Half The Perfect World' has the tremendous challenge of following up one of this decade's very finest musical offerings - her earlier 'Careless Love' LP, which was a modern masterpiece of jazz and folk fusings. Since its release two years ago, I must've recommended that album to over fifty people, and no one who heard it said anything but positive words about it. It featured jaw-droppingly stunning cover versions of songs that were almost total reworkings from their initial musical arrangements, but delivered in Peyroux's sultry, playful and intensely romantic stylings, it was nearly impossible not to be floored by her the purity of her emotion and stupefying musical talent. "Dance Me To The End Of Love" and "Don't Wait Too Long" became household hits, her cover of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" was revelatory. And her versions of "J'ai Deux Amours," "I'll Look Around" and "This Is Heaven To Me" are perhaps the most exquisite romantic ballads yet performed by anyone in this young century. (The extraordinary power of Peyroux's musical spell was such that she could take a song about romantic breakup, like "No More," and turn it into a ballad of seduction - with her seducing us, her audience.)
I imagine many people will be just as enchanted, if not more so, by 'Half The Perfect World.' But while I can certainly call it exemplary, and Peyroux still sings and plays like no other jazz musician today, I unfortunately can't call her latest album a masterpiece. Admittedly, I attribute this mostly to my already intense familiarity with so many of the songs in the album's tracklisting. Peyroux and her band cover Johnny Mercer's "Summer Wind," Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking" (made infamous from the 'Midnight Cowboy' soundtrack), Joni Mitchell's dour ballad "River," and Tom Waits' barroom folksong "(Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night," as well as Charlie Chaplin's rather sentimental "Smile." It's not that the songs are bad, per se, only that Madeleine's earlier choices for cover songs seemed a little more inspired. Peyroux's decision to slow down "Everybody's Talking" into a torch song is daring and enchanting, and definitely one of the most rewarding cover versions. As for the other covers, it's not an offensive selection, and Peyroux's covering is pleasant enough (how couldn't it be, for god's sakes), but did we really *need* another cover of "Summer Wind"? I'm not sure this song, like several of the other covers, is truly special enough to warrant inclusion on Peyroux's first album in two years.
Throughout this new album there are terrific flashes of the musical passion and intense romanticism that saturated the 'Careless Love' LP. Peyroux's gorgeous take on Serge Gainsbourg's "La Javanaise" includes a lovely orchestral string arrangement and Madeleine's marvelous and much-beloved French phrasings. "Once In A While" is a very pretty folk song about survival and strength. Her covers of Leonard Cohen's "Blue Alert" and "Half The Perfect World" are Peyroux at her finest - the title track in particular being the strongest song on the entire album, a delicate masterpiece of a love song in and of itself, and every bit as musically luminous and passionate as anything off 'Careless Love.' The remainder of the material is very enjoyable if not necessarily astounding: "I'm Alright," "All I Need Is A Little Bit" and "California Rain" are all sunny, poppy numbers with a grounded optimism at their center. And her closing the album with "Smile" brings a welcome final note of positivity and encouragement, if not one as hypnotic or blissful as "This Is Heaven To Me" from the previous LP.
While I love Joni Mitchell, and truly enjoy a lot of k.d. lang's discography, Madeleine's duet with lang on Mitchell's "River" seems to me to be the weakest moment on 'Half The Perfect World'; I've never particularly been a fan of this song anyways, and its placement smack in the middle of the songlist momentarily stops the album in its tracks. Perhaps you could argue that Madeleine's cover of "Between The Bars" from 'Careless Love' was also a bit of a bummer amongst the otherwise uplifting material, but Madeleine's hushed and respectful delivery of that song recreated a truly astonishing tale of alcoholism and mournful desperation that was remarkable in its emotional impact. On the other hand, I just find "River" a little too maudlin and simplistic in its musical depiction of romantic mistreatment and guilt, and Peyroux's and lang's take on it unfortunately cannot lift the song out of its fundamental moroseness.
It's not a little eyebrow-raising to listen to this album and contemplate Peyroux's own assertion that for her, there's "a unity of joy" on this LP, when almost half the songs here deal with romantic breakups, loss and loneliness. If there's a sustained "joy" on this album, Peyroux must be referring to the joy of melancholy - which, depending upon your own emotional constitution, personal life experiences and worldview, might be as valid a form of joy as any other (after all, survival - not to mention sustained romantic happiness - in this world doesn't come easy for most people). Like her last album, the positivity and romantic longing on this album sounds hard-earned and not achieved without trials-by-fire.
Following up a masterpiece is never an easy task for any artist, and Peyroux has given us another incandescent album that may not reach her previous album's consistent depths of musical imagination and enchantment, but is still enormously enjoyable on its own rights (the obvious joke to make would be that it's half a perfect album, but it's better than that).