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Melody Gardot: Currency of Man

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Decca Records
Released: 2015.05.29
Time:
 48:52
Category: Jazz, Pop/Rock, R&B
Producer(s): Larry Klein
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.melodygardot.co.uk
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2016
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] It Gonna Come (Melody Gardot) - 5:26
[2] Preacherman (Melody Gardot / Chuck Staab) - 4:31
[3] Morning Sun [For Ezra Richardson] (Melody Gardot) - 5:06
[4] Same To You (Melody Gardot) - 4:59
[5] Don't Misunderstand (Melody Gardot / Jesse Harris) - 4:15
[6] Don't Talk (Melody Gardot) - 4:17
[7] If Ever I Recall Your Face (Melody Gardot) - 6:52
[8] Bad News (Melody Gardot) - 4:38
[9] She Don't Know (Melody Gardot) - 3:59
[10] Once I Was Loved (Melody Gardot) - 4:49

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Melody Gardot - Guitar, Piano, Vocals, Background Vocals

Clément Ducol - Prepared Piano, String Arrangements, String Conductor
Dan Higgins - Baritone & Tenor Saxophone
Irwin Hall - Alto Saxophone
Jesse Harris - Guitar
Dean Parks - Guitar
Larry Goldings - Organ
Gary Grant - Trumpet
Pete Korpela - Percussion
Pete Kuzma - Organ
Mitchell Long - Guitar
Andy Martin - Trombone
Ezra Richardson - Tributee
Reese Richardson - Guitar
Chuck Staab - Drums
Vinnie Colaiuta - Drums
Jerry Hey - Conductor, Horn Arrangements

Heather Donavon - Background Vocals
Clydene Jackson - Background Vocals
Julia Waters - Background Vocals
Maxine Waters - Background Vocals

Larry Klein - Producer
Maxime Le Guil - Engineer, Mixing
Lynne Earls - Engineer
Leslie Jones - String Engineer
Chris Owens - Assistant Engineer
Vanessa Parr - Assistant Engineer
Aristide Rosier - Assistant Engineer
Bernie Grundman - Mastering
Jovite De Laymarie - Artwork, Design, Layout
Karyn Hughes - A&R
David Rose - A&R
Ivy Skoff - Production Coordination

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2015 CD Decca 4724682



On 2012's The Absence, Melody Gardot made her first shift away from the jazz-tinged ballads that drew such heavy comparisons to Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux. Lushly orchestrated, it was chock-full of songs inspired by Brazilian, Latin, and French forms. On Currency of Man, Gardot takes on a rootsier sound, embracing West Coast soul, funk, gospel, and pop from the early '70s as the backdrop for these songs. It is not only different musically, but lyrically. This is a less "personal" record; its songs were deeply influenced by the people she encountered in L.A., many of them street denizens. She tells their stories and reflects on themes of social justice. It's wide angle. Produced by Larry Klein, the cast includes members of her band, crack session players - guitarist Dean Parks, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, Larry Goldings, the Waters Sisters, et al. - and strings and horns. The title track is a funky blues with a rumbling bassline, dramatic strings (à la Motown) and fat horns. Gardot uses the lens of Sam Cooke to testify to the inevitability of change: "We all hopin’ for the day that the powers see abdication and run/Said it gonna come…." First single "Preacherman" is similar, employing a wrangling, smoldering blues that indicts racism in the 20st century by referring to the violent death of Emmett Till, a catalyst in the then-emergent Civil Rights movement. A driving B-3, saxophone, and menacing lead guitar ratchet up the tension to explosive. A gospel chorus mournfully affirms Gardot's vocal as a harmonica moans in the background. "Morning Sun" and closer "Once I Was Loved" are tender ballads that emerge from simple, hymn-like themes and quietly resonant with conviction. "Same to You" evokes the spirit of Dusty Springfield atop the punchy horns from her Memphis period, albeit with a West Coast sheen. The nylon-string guitar in "Don't Misunderstand" recalls Bill Withers' earthy funkiness. The song's a groover, but it's also a warning to a possessive lover. "Don't Talk" uses spooky polyrhythms (à la Tom Waits) as brooding, spacy slide guitars, B-3, and backing singers slice through forbidding blues under Gardot's voice. "If Ever I Recall Your Face" is jazzier, a 21st century take on the film noir ballad with glorious strings arranged by Clément Ducol that rise above a ghostly piano. "Bad News" simultaneously looks back at L.A.'s Central Avenue and burlesque scenes. It's a jazz-blues with a sauntering horn section, snaky electric guitar, and squawking saxophone solo. Vocally, Gardot is stronger than ever here, her instrument is bigger and fuller yet it retains that spectral smokiness that is her trademark. Currency of Man is a further step away from the lithe, winsome pop-jazz that garnered her notice initially, and it's a welcome one.

Thom Jurek - All Music Guide



As smooth singers go, Philadelphia’s Melody Gardot is more versatile than most. On her last album she explored world music; on Currency of Man, she’s gone “conscious”. It’s not quite Erykah Badu, but when you’re a Grammy-winning easy-listening artist, it’s an admirable direction. There are songs inspired by the American civil rights movement (Preacherman, with its twangy, Dusty Springfield vibe), and others that speak out about war, famine and poverty. Moreover, she experiments with new rhythms – elements of 70s funk on She Don’t Know and rushes of gospel on Same to You, teamed with widescreen strings and flashes of horns. Some of her older-style material jars – when playing the cabaret siren on Bad News, or the musical theatre dame on overblown jazz ballad If Ever I Recall Your Face – but for the most part, these heavy-lidded protest jams are a sophisticated twist on her continually evolving sound.

Kate Hutchinson - 28 May 2015
© 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited



Melody Gardot was an unequivocal knockout at the London Jazz Festival in 2012 when she had just released The Absence (REVIEW) . This is her first album since then, and it’s predictably — or rather, unpredictably — impressive. Just in case anyone isn’t familiar with the details, Gardot’s biography is unique among singer-songwriters and is so extraordinary that Hollywood might hesitate to invent it. Her career was triggered by a devastating accident (she was on her bicycle; some idiot in a car shot the lights). Music therapy was crucial to her recovery and she has been left with life changing injuries and the flowering of a truly remarkable talent. Anything she does is worthy of attention and this powerful new album doesn’t disappoint.

Preacher Man, appropriately enough, has a big menacing blues sound. Plangent guitars roll under Gardot’s husky and immaculately timed vocals, as she unfurls her pensive, uneasy lyric. The bad-ass guitar rumbles and moans under her singing like trouble in the next room at a cheap hotel. The splendid guitarists on the album aren’t identified for individual tracks, but they include Gardot herself, Mitchell Long, Reese Richardson, Jesse Harris and the great Dean Parks.

Following on the heels of this thunderous, ominous piece Morning Sun is quietly lovely. It has the feel of the sky clearing with the passing of a storm, that same relieved aftermath purity. A solo violin plays sad, country-style fiddle and plucked strings fade to silence. (No soloists are credited, but the strings are arranged and conducted by Clément Ducol.)

It Gonna Come, with words and music by Gardot, is an unsettling meditation buoyed up by strings and concise horns with gospel handclaps affirming its dark, warning message — all delivered with the utmost casualness and expertise. The worrisome strings on the outro are particularly effective. Relentlessly assertive drumming punches through the opening of Same To You. (The drummers on the album are Chuck Staab and Vinnie Colaiuta, the latter a veteran of Frank Zappa’s wild years, not to mention his work with Chick Corea.) This tune is distinguished by dizzily concise saxophone — the altoist on the album is Irwin Hall, tenor and baritone are played by Dan Higgins — and faint, distorted vocals haunt the edge of our hearing.

On the pulsing, irresistible, Don’t Misunderstand the soulful, doleful violin is back, abetted by a rich bed of strings and soundscape tapes which give way to some sporadic but potent Hammond organ (by Pete Kuzma or Larry Goldings). In contrast to the unsettling intimacy of this, If I Ever Recall Your Face has an orchestral scale and scope, with sweeping swoops of strings acting as a backdrop to the adroit piano (by Melody Gardot herself, although there is also prepared piano on the album by Clément Ducol). The song’s ending suggests only an interim resolution, with a troubling tape loop continuing to play in the listener’s head.

Bad News might well be subtitled 'Un hommage à Tom Waits' — indeed, it even mentions ‘closing time’ — with its jangling percussion and woozy, inebriated New Orleans horns and the scribbling screech of a coarse, raucous but rapturous sax. The refrain here is “The bad news has arrived,” but the message conveyed throughout this CD is quite the opposite. The arrival of a new Melody Gardot album is nothing but the best of good news. There is an extended, deluxe version of Currency of Man available, featuring additional tracks including the tantalisingly titled March For Mingus. Whichever version you favour, you should explore this release. If you are interested in the cutting edge — or indeed the outer limits, or twilight zone — of jazz singing, then Melody Gardot is the woman for you. And me.

Andrew Cartmel - June 08, 2015
londonjazznews.com



Melody Gardot hat weltweit über 3 Millionen Alben verkauft. Doch das macht die Frau nicht aus. Wer ihr zuhört, in ihre Konzerte geht, ihren Weg verfolgt hat, der weiß: Diese Frau ist ein Phänomen jenseits aller Kommerzialität. Sie steht für Seele, Haltung, Sinnlichkeit, Talent und für unnachahmliche Intensität. Mit großer Faszination haben viele Fans das Wachsen und Werden von Melody Gardot in den letzten 7 Jahren seit ihrem Debüt "Worrisome Heart" verfolgt. Es ist ein außergewöhnliches Wachstum, wie nun ihr erstes Album nach drei Jahren Recording-Pause zeigt. Zu sagen, eine Ausnahme-Musikerin bewege sich hier sehr überzeugend zwischen den markanten Musik-Stilen Rhythm&Blues, Jazz, Funk, Soul und Country-Blues, wäre viel zu simpel. Wie Produzent Larry Klein sagt, ist das Ziel von wirklich guter Musik "to puncture the numbness". Die Taubheit zu durchbrechen. Dass genau das Melody Gardot gelingt, liegt an den vielen großartig gelungenen Merkmalen dieses Albums: dem Songwriting und Gesang, der Produktion und nicht zuletzt der Botschaft, die hier verbreitet wird. Welche das ist, mag jeder für sich selbst herausfinden. Currency of Man ist ein Album für Zuhörer und Mitdenker.

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