The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Cécille McLorin Salvant’s For One To Love and Joyce Elaine Yuille’s Welcome To My World

Comments

  1. What Does It Sound Like?

    What is a girl to do if she is a jazz singer and wants to grab some attention in a crowded field?

    Cécile McLorin Salvant isn’t having much trouble with the critics. She has them salivating, winning prize after prize over the last five years. Now, her third album, For One To Love has been released to almost universal acclaim. Her style is idiosyncratic and theatrical. She whoops, growls, purrs, squeals. Her transitions are alarmingly precipitous and her rhythms bizarre. Her vocal performances explode with character and colour. She is a lot of fun. Her band are a simple jazz trio, bass, drums and piano. They do well to keep up. Paul Sikivie, on bass, bubbles and pops especially well. They are given the opportunity to stretch out on a ten minute Bernstein and Sondheim song, Something’s Coming. The result is the most dramatic and best piece on the album. Whether covering song and dance standards or performing one of the five self-penned songs, Salvant puts on quite a show. She does tone down the pyrotechnics in the latter half of the album and sounds all the better for it. She seems to be feeling the songs more rather than showing off her incredible vocal dexterity. In future, I’m hoping she’ll find a better balance.

    Joyce Elaine Yuille’s Welcome To My World is almost the polar opposite. Yuille occupies the R&B end of jazz, not a million miles from Sade on the jazz end of R&B. The songs are mainly originals but she covers Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye and Esther Phillips. She sings with great poise and a perfect sense of timing. Her voice is smooth and feline, evoking a cat purring as it laps melted butter. She is backed by a large band, often supplemented by strings and extra horns. The arrangements glide beautifully. At one point, as I listened to a lovely vibraphone solo, I thought, “Hmm, nice.” However, she does have an ace up her sleeve, the Finnish saxophonist Timo Lassy. He provides all the jazz sparks and would easily steal the show if he was deployed more often. He really is on fire. Yuille is talked about as being ‘the female Gregory Porter’. I can certainly hear her, in my mind’s ear, on Smooth, Jazz FM and Radio Two.

    What Does It All Mean?…

    These are two very different albums by two very different singers. Add in Melody Gardot and we have three excellent albums to enjoy in 2015; cabaret theatre jazz, soul-jazz and blues-rock jazz. None of them are perfect (Salvant’s album needs a little more control, Yuille’s is too long and could do with more Lassy and Gardot should learn more about sequencing) but all of them have much to commend them. I think Salvant will continue to win critical prizes and Yuille will be a commercial success but Gardot has greater versatility of style. It all adds up to a good year so far for female vocal jazz.

    Goes Well With…

    A dance partner. Yuille’s is the most straightforward to dance to, opening, as it does, with a couple of real finger-snappers and featuring a couple of close ballads, Salvant’s is more of a challenge and will require ingenuity but that’s all part of the fun.

    Suits People Who Like…

    The female voice in all its forms. I imagine that both these young ladies will be jaw-dropping live.

  4. Dear mods,

    Could you please move this to its rightful place on Nights In? These ladies might get a bit more of the attention they deserve over there. The image I’d like is Salvant’s cover. She designed it herself.

    • Love Nicole. I’d definitely call her a Soul Singer, though. The Tortured Soul album is especially good. I think @morrison is a fan.

      Timo is extremely talented. He is well worth exploring further. If you get a chance, go a see him live.

      Thanks for your positive comments, KFD. I was feeling a draught blowing by.

      • Know what you mean! You write about something that you are really keen about and there is no response. At all!

        In my case it’s that Concharoo fellow’s fault. I got so intrigued in looking for images of half-naked girls and anachronistic technology, that i forgot to read any other posts.

        As you probably know our pal, Jazzmeister DuCool, does not consider jazz with vocals to be the real thing. His loss of course. But if you could somehow persuade him of the error of his ways……

        • If @duco01 remained unmoved by last year’s majestic No Deal by Melanie De Biaisio then I’m afraid there is no hope for him. I’ll send him a copy if he hasn’t heard it.

          (I reckon Julia Holter is a kind of ‘jazz’. Her new album is out soon. Perhaps, he’ll buy that?)

    • His latest album, Love Bullet, entirely self-composed, is a belter. It features virtually the same band as on Yuille’s: Georgios Kontrafouris on keyboards, Antti Lötjönen on bass and Abdissa Assefa percussion, plus guests Panu Savolainen on vibes and Jukka Eskola trumpet. They are liberated from the confines of backing a vocalist on ‘songs’ and really soar!

  8. Here’s Joyce Elaine Yuille whipping up a storm live in Club Dubrovni in Helsinki with Timo’s band. I’ve just been listening to the album and think your comparison with Sade was right on the money. But a funky Sade.

    Just been listening to the album which is a treat. I’m not sure how well-known she is but give her one hit and she could be enormous.

      • Don’t you worry about DuCool, Tigs. If I post a few more sizzling sax solos he’ll soon find his way over here.

        Having now given both albums a listen I was quite right in thinking I’d like them.

        Shame on me for not giving the lovely Cecile a little more attention.

        Wonderful stuff, but I suspect she will be packing out the jazz clubs rather than having a crossover success. Then again, if she was canny and introduced a few more modern songs, who knows?

Leave a Reply