Album Reviews

Twelve Broadway chestnuts from the days when Broadway shows were produced for New York sensibilities instead of for the midwest bus-hoards. Nothing poisonal, mind you, but Broadway today is aimed at tourists, not New Yawkers.

If there’s to be a second blues revival after the first one in the early ‘60s that led to the “rediscovery” of neglected artists like Son House and even Robert Johnson, the first great analog revival occurring right now will lead the way.

“She brushes off comparisons to Billie Holiday,” according to Mobile Fidelity’s online blurb. Why? That’s like denying the elephant in the room. Peyroux’s squooshy vibrato and top of the throat delivery produce sly vocal timbres that just about channel Billie Holiday between your speakers. Even the miking and equalization have been carefully chosen to sustain the Holiday allusion and almost mimic the mellow recording quality of the time, just as the inner gatefold photography and Peyroux’s outfits reprise the visuals of the ‘40s. It’s canny but I find it distracting and mannered.

Much was made of special guest star Diana Krall’s appearance when this superb album was announced, and while her reading of Cheryl Ernst’s lyrics set to a Jimmy Rowles’s composition is poignant and heartfelt, appropriately, it is Wilson who shines both as an arranger, comfortably in the grip of Gil Evans, and as a precise master of the hollow-bodied electric guitar.

After releasing two perfectly conceived and executed if somewhat campy albums of “country and eastern,” Gray DeLisle is back with an off kilter but no less enticing and superb sounding third effort.

While Mercury gets all the 35MM audiophile glory, Everest also produced a series of sonically spectacular LPs, many recorded on 35MM magnetic film by the late engineer-turned audio columnist Bert Whyte. The advantages of sprocketed 35MM magnetic film are zero “print-through,” minimal “wow and flutter,” higher signal to noise ratio and wider dynamic range than conventional ¼” or ½” recording tape.

This Glasgow-based pop band, led by lead singer and songwriter Tracyanne Campbell produces breezy, tuneful string-driven pop confections bathed in near-cavernous reverb. So great is the reverb that what are real strings sound like synth ones. Oh, well.