DIANA KRALL: The Girl In the Other Room
(continued)

So, what about the remaining collaborations between Krall and Costello? “Narrow Daylight” matches a spiritually charged set of lyrics (Costello/Krall) with a folk rock musical accompaniment that fits like a faded pair of blue jeans (Krall). “Abandoned Masquerade” finds Costello’s incisive lyric paired with a bluesy tune imbued with a smoky, bitter after-hours flavor. “I’m Coming Through” seems a bit like Krall’s attempt at Joni Mitchell-style freeform songwriting with a pop hook. It does a nice job, but never sounds more than a once-removed representation of the source.

But the album closer, “Departure Bay” is a real masterstroke, a song where Krall’s emergence as a singer/songwriter with a jazzy edge is well defined and confidently executed. The close, clustery chords that Krall uses, quietly buttressed by Christian McBride’s elastic and sensitive bass line and intertwined with Anthony Wilson’s guitar work, evoke a stunning number of shades of light and shadow. Drummer Peter Erskine’s brushwork provides just the right amount of peppery punctuation. It’s a truly breathtaking track that, in closing, lends the album and the memory of it that lingers a real sense of gravitas.

Right in the middle of this, literally, Krall throws in two tracks that showcase her jazz and blues influences. Her performance of “Love Me Like A Man,” the Chris Smither tune known to listeners primarily as a vehicle for Bonnie Raitt, is a real showpiece. Some may find the arranged sections to be a bit grating, but overall it is a strong performance that showcases Krall’s pianistic ability. The Arthur Herzog-Irene Kitchings classic “I’m Pulling Through” allows Krall to demonstrate her way with a traditional ballad setting. These two tracks would be the most likely to appeal to Krall’s longstanding audience, who fondly remember her take on the Nat “King” Cole piano trio sound.

The inevitable question that will arise, to an irritating degree, is whether Krall ought still to be considered a jazz artist. I suppose, on the surface of it, that she should not. I doubt if she very much cares at the moment. That is a somewhat capricious statement; she cares in terms of her musical career and stature, but challenges the notion that her stature should be based on her ability to remain within the confines of a certain genre. Krall joins a group of singers who, from their base as respected jazz artists, are exploring the singer/songwriter tradition. Not surprisingly, most of these singers came of age in the early 1970s, the era of singer/songwriters such as Carole King, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Neil Young, Laura Nyro, Neil Diamond, Paul Simon, and , above all, Joni Mitchell. Cassandra Wilson has added songs by Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Sting, and other singer/songwriters to her repertoire, reworking them into her own unique retelling of the collision between blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, and rock. Patricia Barber’s critically acclaimed CD Verse was her own tribute to Joni Mitchell, as Barber presented a song cycle about different experiences of love, from the obsessive to the claustrophobic. Jazz singer Karrin Allyson’s forthcoming album, Wild For You, features “singer-songwriter tunes by folks like Joni Mitchell, Melissa Manchester, Carly Simon, Bonnie Raitt, Carol King, Roberta Flack, James Taylor, Elton John and Cat Stevens. These are some of the tunes that made me want to start singing in the first place,” according to Allyson.

The Girl In the Other Room is poised to move Krall into a comfortable genre-spanning space occupied by AOR performers like Bonnie Raitt and Natalie Cole. For all the jazzheads that will see the betrayal of the faith there will be plenty of people, from soccer moms to metrosexual sophisticates who will find that this music fits well into the soundtrack of their lives. Still, the pop music world is a fickle one, and eventually Krall may need to return to that jazz audience she originally courted. The Girl In the Other Room does an excellent job of staking out new territory without completely abandoning the old. As an album, it is not really coherent in many respects, but few CDs sell these days on the basis of the construction of the entire album. The individual pieces, each its own little microcosm, are what’s important, and they will no doubt entice many listeners who care little about the sum of those parts.