Wisconsin State Journal : JAZZ, adjusted

[Rémi]

JAZZ, adjusted
Jonathan Takiff

It's a different Diana Krall we see on the cover and hear on the tracks of "The Girl in the Other Room."

No slinky seductress this time, giving us a "come hither stare" as she fixes her four-inch stilettos. Now the eyes are closed as she ruminates at the keyboard, and her latest fashion statement is a buttoned-up suit jacket and a shaggy, earth mama hairdo.

The disc inches closer to a bluesy singer-songwriter oeuvre than to Krall's "jazz standard bearer" style of yore.

Instead of the Gershwin brothers and Cole Porter, she's covering Tom Waits ("Temptation"), Joni Mitchell ("Black Crow"), Mose Allison ("Stop This World") and Chris Smither ("Love Me Like a Man"). And she's contributed a half-dozen original songs - at turns somber and heated confessionals about family, loss and newfound love - that represent her first creative collaboration with Elvis Costello, also her husband of six months.

The album came together in a critical period of mourning, reflection and change for the now 39-year-old Krall, she said in a recent chat prompted by her summer U.S. tour, on which she visits Milwaukee Tuesday night.

"Life is a catalyst in itself for the work. This is what I did instead of shutting the door and saying 'I can't deal with it.'"

In May 2002, Diana lost her 60-year-old mother, Adella Krall, to a rare form of bone-marrow cancer. Two spiritual parents, singer Rosemary Clooney and the great jazz bassist Ray Brown, also died. And there was a breakup with a longtime boyfriend.

Krall went back to her childhood home in Nanaimo, British Columbia, not far from Vancouver, and started sifting through the pieces of her life.

Among them were jazz and blues-inflected vinyl albums by the sagely Allison and Waits "that I've been listening to since I was a kid," she said, plus recordings by Joni Mitchell, who in recent years has become an especially shining role model for Krall.

Likewise helping her through this period of angst was legendary British rock and pop experimenter Costello.

According to one published report, Costello first met and calmed Krall's nerves at the February 2000 Grammy ceremony. There, she was a contender for the album of the year award (a rare honor for a piano-playing jazz chanteuse) and actually won the best jazz album Grammy for the same set, "When I Look In Your Eyes."

Two years later, they met again at the Grammys, at which point Elvis raised the idea of a creative collaboration, and Krall, now familiar with his work, agreed.

In the fashion of Costello's 1998 collaboration with Burt Bacharach, Krall wrote most of the music and sketched out ideas for lyrics that Costello brought to life.

Still, few critics have willingly acknowledged the sly, smoky persuasiveness of her vocal style (increasingly inflected with Mitchellisms, I think), or her smart, quote-happy pianistics and facile band interplay - much more vital in live performances (and the new album) than on some of her older studio sessions.

In fact, many's the journalist who has taken Krall to task for her (egad) glamour image and pop jazz "commercialism" - and even for, ahem, corrupting Costello, who divorced his wife (ex-Pogues singer Cait O'Riordan) shortly before marrying Krall last December at Elton John's English mansion.

The truth is, if Krall hadn't sold millions of albums, demonstrating that the world still cared about light jazz vocalizing, would Norah, Cassandra, Jane and the rest have such high-profile careers today?

"I'm still taking (flack). It hasn't let up," Krall did allow in her call from Toronto. "At least, it hasn't let up here in Canada, where the level of criticism is ... ridiculous. One guy wrote the other night that I was 'spewing toxic smoke into the audience.'"

Now back in her glamorous glad rags for concerts, Krall is mixing a few samplings from "The Girl in the Other Room" with the standards "that still speak to me." (The semi-seductive novelty tune "Peel Me a Grape" that won her early fame is off the set list.)

And while her previous, concert-recorded album "Live in Paris" featured a lush string section, Krall is again working with a stripped-down but terrific small group. Along for the ride are the inventive guitarist Anthony Wilson, drummer Peter Erskine (a Joni Mitchell band alumnus) and bassist Robert Hurst, all of whom enjoy plenty of solo opportunities.


Source: Wisconsin State Journal