San Diego Union-Tribune - Sept. 26, 2007

[scielle]

Krall a throaty voice of authority | She is at her very best singing insinuating blues

Andrew Gilbert
26 September 2007
The San Diego Union-Tribune


Diana Krall is looking for comfort, and that's not a bad thing.

With her December 2003 marriage to renaissance man rocker Elvis Costello and her 2004 album "The Girl in the Other Room," she seemed to be entering an exciting new phase of her career.

Krall didn't completely drop her well-honed book of American Songbook standards, Nat Cole rhythm tunes and alternately rollicking and simmering blues. But she suddenly seemed to find her way into emotionally complex contemporary material by Costello, Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits.

Even more intriguingly, she flirted with taking on the singer/ songwriter mantle herself, composing the music for half a dozen tunes while collaborating with Costello on the lyrics, most memorably for the album's title track. But when Krall plays the Viejas Outlet Center tonight, she'll be mostly avoiding "The Girl in the Other Room" to focus on material from her standards-laden albums, particularly last year's "From This Moment On," an elegant, hard-charging American Songbook session featuring the swaggering Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

It would be a mistake to see this as some kind of regression, however. Judging by her June performance at Yoshi's in Oakland, a sold-out show taken in by her doting husband nodding his head appreciatively from a center booth, Krall is applying lessons gleaned from the late 20th-century material to her prewar repertoire. The Yoshi's gigs were her first performances in more than six months, a hiatus due to the birth of her twin sons, and with three more months of road time now under her belt, Krall has polished a crowd-pleasing set of blues and standards that puts her smack dab in her comfort zone.

"It's been very interesting to watch," said guitarist Anthony Wilson, who's toured and recorded widely with Krall since he was featured on "Live in Paris," her Grammy-winning 2001 CD/DVD. " `The Girl In the Other Room' hasn't been a new chapter for Diana. But in some ways, some of the sensibility carries over in the way she's performing and arranging songs, even her harmonic approach.

"Oftentimes, I think that kind of evolution isn't so linear," Wilson said. "You do some work and certain things seep into your playing no matter what you want to do. You haven't just turned a corner. It's a little subtler than that. I think she really has to feel a personal motivation to do a certain song. If she doesn't feel motivated, she just doesn't do it."

At her Yoshi's performance, Krall seemed particularly reassured by her stellar accompanists drummer Jeff Hamilton and bassist John Clayton, who are joining her at Viejas. The lockstep rhythm section partners have been playing together with power and precision ever since they joined the Monty Alexander Trio in 1975. Considering that Hamilton, Clayton and the late bass legend Ray Brown took Krall under their wings some 20 years ago when she was an unknown pianist from Nanaimo, British Columbia, with a degree from Berklee College of Music, she has every reason to trust them implicitly.

With Wilson rounding out her quartet, Krall sounds more authoritative than ever backing herself on piano. At the keyboard, she balances elegance and earthiness. Her solos can punctuate a tune like a two-fisted exclamation point or offer telegraphic commentary. Always generous with her sidemen, she often lays out completely, twisting around on the piano bench to watch Wilson play a perfectly constructed solo.

She's at her best singing insinuating blues, for instance turning "Gee Baby Ain't I Good to You" into a cool seduction. Her sly, self- mocking sense of humor hasn't been dampened by motherhood. After mentioning an upcoming gig in Las Vegas, she said she was looking forward to putting on her sparkly sequined gown. "That's why I became a girl singer," she quipped.

Over the years, she has proved particularly effective at locating and arranging songs ideally suited for her throaty voice, like her brisk, jaunty rendition of Harry Warren and Al Dubin's little-heard gem "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me." With its fresh, suggestive lyric ("ev'ry kiss, ev'ry hug/seems to act just like a drug"), the song feels like it could have been written for Krall, though it debuted in the hit 1933 musical "Forty-Second Street."

Whatever she's learned from Costello, Mitchell and Waits, Krall gives her most frequent props to postwar jazz's most brilliant and influential pianist/vocalists, Nat "King" Cole and Shirley Horn. While Krall's voice isn't made for swooning, she's a master at interpreting songs that trade in the sardonic and mock naive. Her voice is too worldly and knowing to be believed when she sings the ingenue anthem "I Just Found Out About Love," but when she adds, "and I like it, I like it," Krall is utterly convincing.

[Samuel]

Nice article, Scielle.

...'The Girl In the Other Room' hasn't been a new chapter for Diana.

Maybe it has been a new chapter for Diana, who knows...

[Coda]

Thanks, Scielle. After reading the quotes from Anthony Wilson, I wonder why more writers don't contact her fellow band members for color commentary!