(Review by Ann Alex).
Andrea
Wood hails from Washington DC where she attended the Duke Ellington School of
Arts. Claiming influences that range from
classical composers, soul, R & B singers, through to Miles Davis, Bill
Evans, and hip-hop. As well as straight jazz, Ms Wood also sings in other styles such as gypsy jazz and rock regularly performing in and around New York and has
released at least one other CD. On this album her voice is full-toned and appealing. Nine of the 13 tracks are her own original
material: the other 4 tracks are You And
I (Stevie Wonder); Nature Boy; Call
Me Maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen); and Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds.
The
musicians are well up to their game, especially Donny McCaslin’s tenor sax and
the guitar solos, and the keys do well on You
And I. The bass is noticeably
effective playing unaccompanied intros to many of the tracks.
Wood's original compositions are songs of love and loss, with titles such as Intuition; Take A Chance; Parting Ways.
Having said all that, I’m afraid that the CD
as a whole left me feeling dissatisfied.
The original songs needed more of a ‘hook’ to draw me in. Perhaps too many of the singer’s various
influences have been involved in the arrangements – more straight jazz numbers
would perhaps have made for a better general ‘feel’. For instance Nature Boy was one of the better tracks. Or perhaps another style of singing could
have been used on all the tracks: for example Call Me Maybe was pleasantly catchy, and the hip-hop of the track Doowop was interesting. There were 2
tracks entitled Interlude which
consisted of the stop/start and tearing sounds used by DJs, which seemed out of
place on this CD.
The
CD is available on the Biophilia Records Label and it was released on July 14.
Ann Alex.
Andrea Wood (vocals, arrangements); Angelo Di Loreto (piano, fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Hammond B3); Ollie Hirvonen (guitars); Ethan O’Reilly (elec and acc bass, vocals); Phillipe Lemm (drums, perc, vocals); also Donny McCaslin (tenor sax); Nick Wood (production on some tracks, vocals); Andrew Sheron (vocals, elec bass, post-production)
No comments :
Post a Comment