Even better and more her own person than her most illuminating album to date Dearly Beloved when Naama Gheber, now just going out as Naama, proved herself the new Stacey Kent. However glib and only approximate that comparison may - or may not - be if you accept the drift even a bit it does not stand so true here. So, there has been a lot of growth meantime.
Described conceptually as ''the arc of a relationship from its euphoric beginnings to its bittersweet end'' while a bit torchsong-like - ''Dedicated with love to broken hearts, shattered dreams and the beautiful journey to truth'' after all is part of the raison d'être - Naama doesn't go down the easy route and make it all desperately morbid. Some think that's cool but it can kill the whole effect, er, stone dead without meaning to. So no fear on that count.
Naama was born in southern Israel in 1991 and, moving, lived as a child in Baltimore. Today she is a New York scene singer who has studied in Tel Aviv and in New York at The New School. Wild is Love is a vintage ballads, bebop and swingingly Broadway-type very classic jazz approach without being stale or overly fogeyish.
Other great singers in this idiom are most spectacularly - and far more retro camp - this year Judith Owen on Comes Alive and in 2022 Caity Gyorgy on Featuring also issued on La Reserve. The rapport that Naama displays with swinging guitar icon Peter Bernstein - very Randy Napoleon-like in feel if you think of Napoleon's rapport with Freddy Cole - which works well - is distinctive a step or so away from the more bottleneck-loving angle yet nevertheless similarly vintage direction that Jon Herington of Steely Dan pursues with Madeleine Peyroux on Maddy's tremendous Let's Walk out recently when the pair performed their own originals.
The songs chosen are very well curated. It's boring when everyone chooses the same songs again and again. That isn't an issue at all. The 1920s James P. Johnson and Henry Creamer song 'If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight)' you won't hear much on any record recently. We pick out Mae West's trotting version from the 1950s as a fun contrast. It's from The Fabulous Mae West. On Naama's, drummer Charles Goold's whispering snare nets us in rustling away and Glenn Zaleski on piano is nippy and characterfully comping before a classy Bernstein solo emerges out of nowhere to whisk us somewhere else entirely. Yet it's all truncated. And you don't get some of the later verses but still works.
When we think of the Gershwin/Buddy DeSylva 1920s song 'Do It Again' we turn to Judy Garland with Nelson Riddle in the 1950s, a song found on the Judy in Love classic album. While a whole lot frothier this is also a big highlight of Wild Is Love - a strong suit for the bassist Dave Baron. Other bright spots include the take on 'A Cottage for Sale'. Our favourite version is Billy Eckstine's big band treatment from the mid-1940s or when the late much missed Freddy Cole sang it and this compares well.
As for the dreamy Ray Rasch, Dotty Wayne title track 'Wild Is Love' - not the best track of all (of course a subjective claim) but certainly very lovable for its lost in a dance quality it's not Nat King Cole's we like best but Cécile McLorin's Salvant's fairly recent treatment found on the great Cécile's 2018 album, The Window. With the singer are guitarist Bernstein, pianist Zaleski, bassist Baron and drummer Goold and the album was recorded last September in New York in a Long Island City studio called GB's Juke Joint. Sonics are really warm.
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