Album Reviews

Second albums make or break pop artists. If the first one was a smash the second one had also better be or you risk the "one hit wonder" label. That's what happened to Christopher Cross, Marshall Crenshaw and more recently James Blunt, even though Cross and Crenshaw followed up their debuts with many good records—or at least good tunes. They just didn't produce chart hits.

In the case of a non-pop artist the follow-up to a promising but not startling debut has to demonstrate artistic and creative growth. If it's merely as good as the first album, it's pretty much over.

Lost In Romance Lyn Stanley's debut was a promising debut—and whether or not you responded positively to it—a gutsy one: closely miked with a sonically unadorned backdrop. You heard everything, which was what Ms. Stanley wanted. It was her record in every sense of the word: she initiated and paid for the production and she made all of the decisions in consultation with a team of her choosing.

Just as there were flashes of truly excellent technical and interpretive singing, there were also some subtly rough phrasing and/or interpretive patches or as I call them "uh-oh moments" where the wires show in a high flying debut act. These were most obvious on songs like George Harrison's "Something" and Willie Dixon's "I just Want to Make Love to You".

Overall though, Lost In Romance successfully achieved its objectives, presenting Lyn Stanley to a well-targeted international audiophile audience appreciative of both good material well-sung and the highest caliber sonics. The album was musical and sonic comfort food for an audience hungry for it and considering that Ms. Stanley was unknown not that long ago and is now well-known within the audiophile community and has sold to an appreciative audience around 10,000 vinyl copies of a fairly expensive double 45rpm package, that easily qualifies on all fronts as "mission accomplished".

For her all-important follow-up Ms. Stanley doesn't stray all that far from her original game plan though the album's concept is in far better focus. Potions collects fourteen songs, mostly from the non-rock side of the 1950s (plus one LP bonus track from a different decade dedicated to her mentor Paul T. Smith who passed away in June of 2013). Smith was an accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O'Day, Mel Tormé and many other jazz vocal greats and he was also the musical director for "The Steve Allen Comedy Hour" ('smock! smock!).

The songs closest to rock'n'roll/R&B are covers of "Love Potion #9", Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'" as well as of "The Thrill Is Gone", popularized by B.B. King and The Five Satins' "In the Still of the Night" . Stanley also covers "Cry Me a River", "Fly Me to the Moon", "Hey There" from "The Pajama Game" (popularized by Rosemary Clooney), "A Summer Place", "Misty", and "Teach Me Tonight".

As on her previous album Ms. Stanley is skillfully backed by top studio and gigging piano/bass/drum combos augmented with guitar or clarinet or sax with a percussionist occasionally added. The arrangements are models of clarity and economy and the "name brand" musicianship is impeccable. Among the players are drummer Joe LaBarbera (who played with Bill Evans), pianists Bill Cunliffe and Kenny Werner (who also produced the album) and tenor saxophonist Rickey Woodard (who reminds me of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis cooing to Frank Sinatra on Live at the Sands).

The album opens with a "sassy" cha cha version of the familiar "Lullaby of Birdland", which is really atypical of the rest of the album. Most of the album is cooler and more swinging. But here's the thing: Ms. Stanley's vocalizing has taken flight compared to the last album. Her phrasing is far more assured and less pedestrian. She glides and soars with an ease and control only occasionally heard on the debut, taking unexpected turns and abrupt volume shifts. She lingers longer and moves from phrase to phrase more gracefully and with greater rhythmic and intonation agility . The occasional "moments of karaoke" that marred the debut are missing in action here. She's far more at ease.

It took guts to cover "Cry Me a River" and "Misty" among other classics long associated with one particular artist like Julie London is with "Cry Me a River." Ms. Stanley truly makes them her own on this album, whereas on the debut the best you could say about some of them was that she "had them covered". She's comfortable and that makes the listener comfortable, though on occasion her perfect diction jars. For instance on "Fly Me to The Moon" there's the phrase "In other words, hold my hand." Yes the words are "in other words" but who says them separately? It's always pronounced "another words" so to hear them separated out jars. She stops to hit hard the "T" in JupiTer and in "shooTing star" and in other places hits the "S" sibilant with too much emphasis. Sometimes the neatness and precision blocks the flow—but on this album I have to look hard to find things to criticize about Ms. Stanley's vocal performance.

While Ms. Stanley nimbly handles the uptempo numbers like the NOLA rhythm'd "After the Lights Go Down Low", she truly shines on the slower, more intimate ballads, a few of which were more problematic on the debut album. "You Don't Know Me" and "The Thrill Is Gone" are highlights as is "Teach Me Tonight".

That these are mostly pop tunes done in a "jazzy" style and not jazz standards works in favor of Ms. Stanley's artistry, which based on her first two albums is more pop/cabaret than jazz. That also accounts for her accessibility and her almost immediate popularity among the "sonically aware community".

Also contributing to her immediate success within this community was the production and sound on the previous album. It's even better here, again engineered and mixed by the great Al Schmitt. Backing tracks were recorded at Avatar in New York and Capitol in Hollywood with all vocals recorded in Hollywood at Capitol (using the same U47 used by Sinatra) or LAfx studio.

With the exception of the backing track on "The Party's Over" recorded using ProTools and "Love Potion #9", which is a hybrid backing track of analog tape and ProTools, all of this album was recorded and mixed to analog tape (including the tracks that have digital components). With Al Schmitt at the board recording to analog at great studios you'd expect superb sonics and super sonics are what you get, with Bernie Grundman mastering and pressing at RTI.

Regardless of your musical tastes—and no doubt some will find this overly "glossy" and mannered— I guaranty you that Potions is among the best sounding new records (or SACDs) you are likely to hear this year or next, or the year after that. The instrumental timbre and textures are utterly natural and effortless and transparency is "you are there". Ms. Stanley's voice is recorded with equal transparency, clarity and verisimilitude. Yes, it is still possible to produce recordings "like they used to". Credit Lyn Stanley here for putting her mouth where her money is and succeeding sonically and most importantly artistically. Potions takes her and the listener higher.