Jazz vocals album of the week: Madeleine Peyroux, Let's Walk, Thirty Tigers **** recommended

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Madeleine Peyroux and Jon Herington, above, who wrote all the mighty songs on Let's Walk. Herington from the Dan contributes lots of choice bottleneck and squally, deftly chugging, electric guitar.

Vintage once again clinches the deal. Madeleine Peyroux's strongest material in simply years, the American singer who rocketed to crossover jazz acclaim out of nowhere with her utterly distinctive bluesy style in the 1990s with Atlantic album Dreamland and later even more profile and sales in 2004 with the Larry Klein produced Careless Love, the best of the new songs on Let's Walk is easily 'Showman Dan' and the hard-hitting sociopolitically inspired very poetic meditation, 'How I Wish,' like a parable of post-George Floyd modern day America when we are yet to hear ''freedom ring'' - the great desire of Martin Luther King and surely all sane thinkers the world since.

Peyroux's first album in six years the beautifully pieced together video for 'Showman Dan' issued with the song gives a glimpse of performance footage, home movies and personal photos in the eponymous Dan's honour with a young, yet-to-be-discovered Peyroux in the frame.

Lightly zydeco coated

Memories of Peyroux's longtime friend and mentor Daniel William Fitzgerald - the Showman Dan of the title, who passed away in 2017 - personalise the lightly zydeco coated album in the styling with memories of him in keeping with the singer's sometimes nostalgic, maudlin, vintage style delivered with her trademark salty ache, bittersweet tones and bluesy connotations. Personnel on this co-produced Elliot Scheiner album of Peyroux and Herington's, recorded in a Rhinebeck, New York state, studio not too far from Poughkeepsie last August and September, also includes pianist-organist Andy Ezrin who proves a little Allen Toussaint-like in places, bass guitarist Paul Frazier and drummer-percussionist Graham Hawthorne. Singers Catherine Russell, Cindy Mizelle and Keith Fluitt do backing vocals - clarinettist Stan Harrison pops up on 'Nothing Personal.' We took the CD for a bumpy drive down through the Irish border country badlands last week and it proved a great companion.

'Me and the Mosquito' is amusing and live is bound to tickle the audience. The bilingual Madeleine sings French on 'Et Puis.'

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Soho photos: marlbank

Out on 28 June. Peyroux plays the Barbican's Summer Jazz Series in London on 21 July. Three Let's Walk tracks - 'Showman Dan,' 'How I Wish' and yes 'Please Come On Inside' mentioned up top - are streaming

Tags: Reviews

Wе should step out, from under this shroud, warming bones in thе dappled light, with the choosing still ours.

Moving lyrically from cloud to shroud: Here's the logic for choosing a 1980s pop singer as track of the week on a jazz blog: To us the greatest jazz singer ever is Billie Holiday. There have been many, many valid approaches to Lady Day since she left us in 1959 - some songbook related, some soundalikes, some who just get it.

And the latter applied in the 1980s with the Billericay born Anglo-French singer Alison Moyet. The interesting thing to us is you don't have to be a jazz singer to do this and yet still reach all those who care enough to hear. Moyet isn't ''officially'' a jazz singer - it's absurd to even think such a thing given her identification with synthpop - or even sound like Holiday. But the way Moyet did the 1940s Allan Roberts, Doris Fisher classic with Billie in mind 'That Ole Devil Called Love', a top 10 singles pop hit in the UK charts in 1985, showed not only the wonderful Yazoo singer's versatility but more importantly it displayed her empathy.

On mortality and grievous pain

And empathy as well as humanity on incredible not Billie but Bowie-esque Moyet/Richard Oakes/Sean McGhee original 'Such Small Ale' something of a beautiful, very wise, aubade in all tristesse from the Sean McGhee produced and arranged Key out this autumn is one thing. Simply conveyed against synths, Suede player Oakes' guitar, bass and drums coming with lots of power chords and hardly any chordal progressions, nevertheless jazz relatability - without being at all intended or even present - is also huge. It's a great song. The richness and deepness of Moyet's voice is even better than in her pomp and so beautifully captured for its immediacy in the Cooking Vinyl sonics. God, you could even easily imagine Bill Frisell for one covering this song effectively maybe in the future.

''Such rocks in my heart'' still convince and migrate from Billie to Bowie on the ''reservoir of pain'' plangency of 'Such Small Ale' drawn from this autumn's Key by Alison Moyet, above - photo: press

Daily jazz blog, Marlbank

Jazz vocals album of the week: Madeleine Peyroux, Let's Walk, Thirty Tigers **** recommended

Lightly zydeco coated

Track of the week: Alison Moyet, 'Such Small Ale,' Cooking Vinyl

On mortality and grievous pain