Madeleine Peyroux released her seventh album this year, almost twenty years after her debut Dreamland. She is a female musician with a rich discography, not in a dull quantitative sense. Content and substance is what makes her opus so precious. Although a comparison with Billie Holiday is a well known story, Madeleine Peyroux stands on her own feet as a unique artist.
Secular Hymns was created with the help from Jon Herington and Barak Mori, the guys she had toured with for the past two years. The album is recorded in a church in Oxfordshire where the trio had a concert, so the atmosphere of live performance is strong on the record. This comes as no differentia specifica of her seventh album, as she has mastered the method on her earlier stuff. Madeleine manages to sound like you are listening to her live in a smoky dive bar.
Peculiarity of this album is that there are mostly covers. From traditional Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt and Linton Kwesi Johnson to Willie Dixon and Allen Toussaint, Peyroux has covered a broad spectrum of musical influences, but still accomplished to sound like herself. When it comes to experimentation, Peyroux is not a scientist. She is just a jazz singer with the talent for powerful interpretation.
Tango Till They’re Sore is an example of her kunst. She saved the touch of Tom Waits while adding her sparkle at the same time. In the end, we have a Waits hit in the jazz manner that sounds both funky and elegant.
As most albums have one track leading the rest, Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky (From Now On) is the tune of Secular Hymns. It is a song originally recorded by Allen Toussaint. If The Sea Was Whiskey and Shout Sister Shout are top blues covers, while funk dominates More Time.
The story of this record is a meeting point of jazz, funk and blues. Madeleine Peyroux knows how to make hymns both universal and personal, and that is why she is a top notch jazz singer everyone adores.
