Friday, July 16
By Tony Gieske
The reborn Diana Krall ended her splendid but uneven show the other night with a romp through the blues, first wailing away on the grand piano and then doing some shouting on the blues called "I'm Walking."
This kid's got so much chops, you find yourself thirsty every time to hear what she'll do with them on a plain dirt plot like the blues. The answer is, too much. You wanted to give her the kind of advice you used to hear when the brothers were jamming the blues in South Central: "Take your time, Sister D."
Of course, when you're filling up the Greek Theatre a couple of nights running, with almost as many stretch limos outside as there were for Frank Sinatra, and you've got a hot new album out in collaboration with your new husband, the renowned Elvis Costello, and you're singing your little heart out to boot -- that's not the sort of advice you're in the market for.
This husband dude, by the way -- not that one is jealous -- but is he really a bro? You wouldn't want to say that, to judge by the lyrics he wrote that Krall was singing. "Almost Blue" is a good example. Flirting with this disaster became me/It named me as the fool who only aimed to be/Almost blue. ...
The new bride gave this one an intro worthy of Rachmaninoff, sang the words by bringing them up from somewhere inside herself that one had not been aware existed, fondled them with keyboard fingerings worthy of her mentor, the great Jimmy Rowles, and almost made their understated or I say bogus profundities real ... almost.
That voice of hers has developed into a thing of wonder and power. But it needs fodder like she found in the evening's highlight, "I'll String Along With You." Here, Krall used her voice like an instrument as never before, scatting the lyrics with a different sound color for each feeling, jump cutting from a muted trombonelike Buster Cooper forte to a whispered Stan Getz-style pianissimo. i
She'd brought a great little band with her: Anthony Wilson, guitar; Robert Hurst, bass; and Peter Erskine, drums. Wilson is an underrated whiz who tore up the joint with chorus after chorus on the uptempo numbers she'd skedded for her all-stars.
Krall got back to her boffo side on such bitterly witty numbers as Bob Dorough's "Devil May Care," Tom Waits' "Temptation" and "Stop the World" by Mose Allison. She knows no peer in such tough-talking stuff.
And finally, you had a feeling that nobody there will ever forget the out-of-nowhere, utterly charming piano bagatelle she made out of "Don't Fence Me In," with every fresh, whispered phrase a signpost of taste. Sister D took her time on this one.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
