I often thought this year of something Jesse Harris asked me when I interviewed him in 2021. Had I heard of French singer Gabi Hartmann? I hadn’t. But I remembered the name. Hartmann has continued to collaborate with Harris and this year her album La Femme Aux Yeux de Sel with whom the peerless ‘Don’t Know Why’ hit songwriter contributed winning material I think is one of the year’s best jazz adjacent vocals releases.
I like this latest quite different album of Harris’ also not just because of the Norah Jones track although that song of bemused weariness ‘Having a Ball’ is lovely and woozy.
Mainly though I like If You Believed In Me for its quiet not at all false humble modesty, lovely soft stylings and great orchestral arrangements by the Brazilian Maycon Ananias. Guitar and voice is at the heart of everything nevertheless. Harris has a lulling voice and sounds kind of disappointed as a default setting, maybe love weary is a better gloss and that not exactly cynical more knowing approach suits his grown up songs.
Recorded between New York, Rio and Tallinn, the album features guest appearances from Jones, Brazilian guitarist Guilherme Monteiro and Jake Sherman, known for his work with Larry Goldings’ hilariously bewigged alter ego the Austrian jazz educator who unwittingly mangles the music of Thelonious Monk in the spirit of “correcting” the Spherical one’s genius – Hans Groiner.
Marine Quéméré (no, me neither) is marvellous singing in French suitably Gallic shruggingly on ‘Rose du Ciel’. “Mais j’attends l’extraordinaire” she sings – “I’m waiting for the extraordinary” – fear not, dear reader, it’s not like Godot. She’s just not going to be rushed. But the extraordinary happily stoops to conquer and shows up in quite a few places on If You Believed In Me overall something of a pleasure although not all tracks are addictive.
Song I love best is the co-write with Camila Doring ‘Where’s Your Shadow’ which rebukes the object of the song for their not believing in what they’ve done or scathingly and so, so softly enunciated – to “me or anyone”. Harris is good at the art of the rebuke. But you know it’s for your own good really – the songs, even when they delve into unease, are too humane to mean anything destructive. And he seems to have a good inkling as to the mysteries of the heart but doesn’t wish to ram his wisdom down your throat.
