Songs bathed in orchestral string sound are not necessarily everyone's cup of tea. Certainly not for many jazz fans, whom Melody Gardot has primarily appealed to, at least at the beginning of her career with her art of singing. Still a great jazz singer, she has in the meantime developed her own style of music making, which on the surface is close to pop, but inside still shines in the spectrally diverse light of jazz. Her latest album Sunset In The Blue, which was produced during the first lockdown this year, falls into the category of Easy Listening with its mostly quietly to very quietly flowing songs that come along on velvet paws. These songs are suitable for relaxing at the end of the day with a glass of whisky in your hand after work. The largely equal temperament of the songs, which does not unnecessarily distract from relaxed enjoyment, does the rest.
The extremely pleasing, but nevertheless exciting pace of this album is not only due to Melody Gardot's choice of classic songs and the songs she has composed herself, but also to the saxophone solos that sparkle like gems, the virtuosic guitar, the competent double bass and drum accompaniment. The classics "Moon River", "Ave Maria" and "From Paris With Love" experience through Melody Gardot, far from simple cover versions, a pronounced redesign with direct, unadulterated access. The highlight is "Ninguem, Ninguem", one of two Portuguese-language songs on the album penned by Melody Gardot, which defines an antipode to the otherwise largely pleasing pace of the album.
The album contains a special feature in the form of the song "From Paris With Love": Around forty musicians from all over the world individually recorded their contributions to the song "From Paris With Love" on May 1, 2020, the International Jazz Day.
With Sunset In The Blue, Melody Gardot has created an atmospherically dense, convincing album. All those who are not really enthusiastic about the orchestral string sound, which serves as a background for the majority of the songs on the album, may ask themselves whether it could not be improved by removing the orchestral over-sugariness of the songs afterwards: The competent guitar, saxophone, bass and drum accompaniment on Sunset In The Blue alone would be completely sufficient to set Melody Gardot's vocals in a kitsch-free instrumental framework appropriate to the songs. Since nowadays studio albums are produced multi-track, it should be possible to eliminate the track with the orchestra sound in a special edition of Sunset In The Blue.
Melody Gardot, vocals
Sting, vocals
Phillippe Baden Powell, piano
Till Bronner, trumpet
Donny McCaslin, tenor saxophone
Antoine Chatenet, guitar, bass, drums, synthesizers
Dominic Miller, guitar
Anthony Wilson, guitar
Dadi Carvahlo, guitar
Nando Duarte, guitar
Larry Klein, guitar, bass
John Leftwich, bass
Sam Minaie, bass
Chuck Berghofer, bass
Vinnie Colaiuta, drums
Chuck Staab, drums
Paulinho Da Costa, percussion
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vince Mendoza, orchestral arrangements