|
By Jim
DeRogatis
Jazz fans can be such snobs. For all our High Fidelity
obsessiveness and occasional lapses into cultural myopia, at least we
rockers are rarely elitist out of a sheer, simple disdain for populism. I
mean, the Beatles stand as one of the most successful rock bands ever (the
best-selling group of 2001, in fact), and they also happen to have had
considerable artistic merit. I’ll truck no high-minded, post-feminist
defense of Britney Spears’ lowest-common-denominator pandering, but I’ll
fight long and hard about the merits of Smash Mouth, and I have a
rock-critic peer whose eloquent parsing of the charms of the Backstreet Boys
is almost enough to convince you. (Almost.)
Not so with the high-minded jazzbo. He (and it’s almost always a he)
is spending an awful lot of time these days kvetching and wailing about the
success of Diana Krall, that comely blonde Canadian who has become the
best-selling jazz artist of the new millennium. The rap on Krall is that not
only is she successful, but she’s actively courting and enjoying
success! As if the only career models for the modern torch singer should be
the miserable downward spiral of Lady Day or the cloistered cabaret cultdom
of the Rosemary Clooney/Bobby Short set.
Granted, Krall’s willful acquiescence to the image-mongering of the
modern music biz can seem a little over the top. Witness her progression of
cover photos, from the polyester-wearing frump of 1992’s Stepping Out,
to the black/white, good girl/bad girl dichotomy of ’96’s All for
You, to the leggy vixen in the little black dress on last year’s The
Look of Love. She’s even hotter inside the CD booklet, posing as a
casually tussled backseat bimbo with a fetching come-hither look that
recalls Olivia Newton-John’s post-transmogrification slut in Grease.
Then there were those appearances on Melrose Place, and Krall’s
anointing as an icon by the Target department stores. She showed up on the
cover of Target the Family, the chain’s holiday advertorial/magazine,
dreamily gazing out amid cover lines such as "Beautiful Buffets: Service
with style" and "Special Handbag Size!" None of this did much for her
serious muso cred.
But hey, in these culturally-constricted, corporate-dominated times,
there’s an argument that holds that advertising is actually doing more to
bring good art to the masses than radio or the music press. (Call it "the
Moby defense.") And even if you insist that Krall is an over-eager sell-out,
well, if you’d been raised in the nowhere burg of Nanaimo, British Columbia
with a sister who became a Mountie, you’d probably be anxious to buy into
something a little more glamorous, too.
There are mitigating factors that give the skeptics pause, including the
37-year-old’s respect for jazz tradition and her exquisite taste in
material. She has toured with Tony Bennett, and New York Times critic
Stephen Holden has called The Look of Love "the most satisfying
collection of orchestrated popular standards to be released since the heyday
of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald."
Krall has been choosing songs wisely from the beginning. She tackled
Rodgers & Hart and Duke Ellington on her debut, and Irving Berlin, George
Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Leslie Bricusse on ’99’s When I Look in Your
Eyes. With All for You, she paid an entire album’s tribute to the
smoothie who is perhaps her ultimate favorite, Nat (King) Cole. And she’s
always found the right vehicle to deliver these classics.
Strings are always a controversial subject in jazz—Charlie Parker got
crap for using ’em!—but Krall’s foray into orchestral turf is done right.
The Look of Love alternately utilizes the London Symphony Orchestra and
the Los Angeles session orchestra (no hacks here), and the arrangements are
all crafted by the much-revered Claus Ogerman, whose collaboration with
Michael Brecker on Cityscape was a big influence back in Nanaimo.
Keeping things moving with countless variations of a slinky, sultry bossa-nova
groove is the world-class rhythm section of bassist Christian McBride and
drummer Peter Erskine. But ultimately it all comes down to The Voice.
It takes a lot more than chops to do something new with the Gershwins’
classic "S’Wonderful" or the standard "Besame Mucho" (which even the Beatles
covered), but Krall claims them as her own via sheer force of personality.
Here’s where a rocker’s perspective comes in handy. Like Debbie Harry,
Chrissie Hynde, or Justine Frischmann of Elastica, Krall’s dark, sensual,
smoky vocals deliver more than just lilting and lovely notes. They convey
an attitude, and that’s what’s at the heart of her appeal.
There is a hint of irony, a bit of cool postmodern detachment, but most
of all an underlying strength and self-assurance that brings new depths of
meaning to the traditional romantic lyricism of Look’s 10 tunes,
which are carefully sequenced to chart the arc of a very-today relationship.
Krall takes us from the first blush of infatuation ("S’Wonderful," "Love
Letters"), through betrayal ("Cry Me A River," "The Night We Called It a
Day"), to arrive at the modern woman’s uneasy truce between self-reliance
and lusty co-habitation ("The Look of Love," "Maybe You’ll Be There").
Jazz and rock extremists alike may dismiss this as lounge music, but if
so, Krall commands a lounge that could at any moment reveal itself to be a
clandestine bacchanal, or maybe an after-hours S&M club. It’s about time
jazz had a riot grrrl, and it’s the purists’ loss if they don’t appreciate
her. Meanwhile, like much of America, I say to Diana, "Take me, I’m yours."
--From The Rake, Minneapolis
BACK TO NEWS
BACK TO OTHER
WRITINGS |
|