JACKIE ALLEN
Tangled

Blue Note

Read the Jazzitude review of Jackie Allen/The Men In My Life
Read the Jazzitude review of Jackie Allen/Love Is Blue

by Marshall Bowden

These days its impossible for vocalists like Jackie Allen to make a recording without some kind of unifying theme, some kind of subtext to pull the whole thing together. That used to be de rigeur in pop music, but in today’s overly image conscious, attention deficit-driven society, there’s increasingly less attempt to create an album that holds together in any appreciable way. Allen, like fellow vocalists Cassandra Wilson, Kate McGarry, and a host of others, is a talented singer who seeks to find ways to bring the vocal sophistication of jazz to more pop-oriented material in order to draw an adult audience that is uninterested in Top 40 divas and their antics. On her past two releases, Love Is Blue, and The Men In My Life, Allen focused on the melancholy side of love and paid tribute to her favorite male singers and songwriters. On Tangled she approaches the broad subject of relationships—between lovers, mothers and children, and the individual and God. Tangled, her first Blue Note release, continues to utilize the formula that has made her past two releases so pleasing, but she continues to grow and add depth to her vocal performances, so it never feels like she’s merely rehashing old territory.

Allen works with a posse of musicians who have been at her side for some time, including her previous recordings. They are musicians who play well together, create a distinctive sound, and support Allen’s vocal work very well. Most are Chicago based, as Allen herself is. Laurence Hobgood, who worked with Allen on Love Is Blue, is well known as part of Kurt Elling’s band, as well as fronting his own excellent trio. Ben Lewis, who plays keyboards on several tracks, is also a well known musician around the Windy City. Guitarist John Molder, a member of the Paul Wertico Trio, has been a constant companion of Allen’s. His work on this disc is typically beautiful and distinctive, as much a part of the ‘Jackie Allen sound’ as Allen’s voice itself. Trumpet player Orbert Davis has played trumpet on incredible numbers of recordings and commercials, and he lends his work to the Allen original “Slip” as well as some bold plunger work to Donald Fagen’s “Do Wrong Shoes.” And bassist Hans Sturm is not only Allen’s bassist, but her husband as well.

As always, Allen can draw the listener in with her confessional, honey-toned voice, or she can seduce with breathy sensuality. On the opener, a hymn-like rendition of Van Morrison’s “When Will I Ever Learn” she tugs at the heartstrings as she always has on her best work. The same is true of the second track, the Moulder/Sturm-penned “Coal Grey Eyes,” which has the kind of melody that works particularly well with Allen’s voice. Allen contributes three originals, co-written with writer/poet Oryna Schiffman, all of which are excellent. Sturm contributes the incredible “Hot Stone Soup,” apparently about his mother’s advancing age-induced dementia, but in many ways a meditation on time, memory, and growing older that everyone can relate to on some level. These beautiful originals fit very well alongside Allen’s choice of modern songwriter material (“When Will I Ever Learn,” “You’ll Never Learn,” “Do Wrong Shoes,” “Living Without You”) and great American songbook material (“You’re Nearer,” “Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You,” “Solitary Moon”) and give the album a unified sound and feel that are recognizable, yet new.

Love Is Blue, Allen’s last release, was an album that sustained a single mood straight across the board, and some listeners found it a bit of a downer. In all honesty, it was a real artistic success, but for her Blue Note debut Allen has produced a stylistically varied set whose theme is a net cast widely enough to sustain that variety yet still hold together as an album. I can’t see any way that Allen won’t break through and become the kind of successful, genre-bending singer that labelmates Cassandra Wilson and Patricia Barber have become. The truth is, Allen already arrived as a mature artist a couple of albums ago. Tangled is a graceful major label debut that confirms that and, hopefully, spreads the word about this talented singer and songwriter.