Madeleine Peyroux – Anthem (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 59:10 minutes | 685 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music Division Decca Records France
That Leonard Cohen is still offering inspiration should come as no great surprise. Dubbing her album Anthem after a song by the Canadian singer, Madeleine Peyroux shows us her hand from the off. Perhaps it’s her desire to get shot of the ghost of Billie Holiday to whom she has often been compared… But in 2018, Madeline Peyroux is very much Madeleine Peyroux! Style, voice, writing, she has mastered every part of her art and has nothing left to prove. This time, she leaves covers behind and offers new songs, written or co-written with Patrick Warren (Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen), Brian MacLeod (Leonard Cohen, Tina Turner), David Baerwald (Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow) and producer Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin, Herbie Hancock). The lyrics are often politically-engaged, and she sets them lovingly to soft-to-downright-melancholy music. The overall effect is one of weightlessness. The arrangements and the production have a velvety feel, and while she takes on Paul Eluard’s powerful poem Liberté, she does it with a delicate touch that renders the words even stronger. As is often the case with Peyroux, the boundaries between jazz, pop, soul, blues and folk are savvily blurred together. This makes for a great showcase for her voice, one of the most addictive of her generation. – Max Dembo
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Madeleine Peyroux – Secular Hymns (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 33:37 minutes | 698 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Artwork: Front cover | © Verve Int’l
2016 marks Madeleine Peyrouxs twentieth anniversary as a recording artist with the release of Secular Hymns, a spirited and soulful masterwork of loping, skipping, sassy, feisty and sexy tunes delivered in a captivating melange of funk, blues and jazz. Peyroux set out to record a collection of songs with their own hymn-like stories of self-awareness & inner dialogue, a communal consciousness & a spiritual essence. Here, Madeleine intimately renders tunes by seminal blues artists like Willie Dixon & Lil Green, gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, dub star Linton Kwesi Johnson, 3 renowned American composers (Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, Allen Toussaint), 19th century composer Stephen Foster & ending with a traditional African-American Spiritual. (more…)
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