DIANA KRALL
From This Moment On

Verve

Read the Jazzitude review of Diana Krall/The Girl In the Other Room
Read the Jazzitude review of Diana Krall/Live In Paris
Read the Jazzitude review of Diana Krall/The Look of Love
Read the Jazzitude review of Diana Krall/Christmas Songs
Read the Jazzitude review of Diana Krall/From This Moment On

Diana Krall’s last album, The Girl In the Other Room, was an attempt to move the winsome singer/pianist into the realm of pop music singer-songwriter. Both the results and the reviews were mixed—the album was less than popular with those who’ve always admired her albums of jazz standards, and it did little to broaden her audience. So, Krall has stepped back into the role that has brought her the most attention on her new CD From This Moment On.

This album will probably win back a lot of Krall’s fans who were put off by The Girl In the Other Room. It also corrects the excesses of the album before that, The Look of Love, which was awash in syrupy strings and breathy vocals, with little of Krall’s piano work. From This Moment On features Krall at the piano accompanied by the superb Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Excellent soloists abound, including Jeff Clayton on alto sax and trumpeter Terrell Stafford. All is swinging and lush, with only one problem—Krall’s vocal work is all too samey across the album and, in the end, it’s just…well…dull.

Some might argue that her delivery is sophisticated and understated, but it simply doesn’t read that way across the slightly under one hour playing time of this disc. Everything around Krall is lovely and sophisticated, but she simply cannot carry the task of fronting this band convincingly. Take her version of the classic Jobim song “How Insensitive.” It’s certainly not bad, it just doesn’t hold the listener’s attention. Oh, is that song done? I didn’t realize.

“Exactly Like You” returns to the touchstone that has always been Krall’s bread and butter—the sound of the classic Nat King Cole Trio. Krall’s ability to summon the spirit of that group was one of the things jazz fans first noticed and liked about her. And it’s a winning performance. But the somnambulism returns on a cover of the Rodgers/Hart tune “Little Girl Blue.” It doesn’t sound for one moment as though Krall is blue—more like she couldn’t get her favorite coffee drink at the local Starbucks. The same with her version of “Willow Weep For Me.” The gorgeous arrangement and setup leave things wide open for Krall, who seems to sleepily walk through the tune.

It’s not as though From This Moment On is a bad album. In order to be truly bad, an artist has to exhibit some passion about what they are doing, what they are singing, and just miss the boat. And that kind of passion is simply absent from Krall’s work here. As previously mentioned, those who enjoyed Krall principally as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook will be overjoyed to hear her back in her usual form, but more adventurous listeners will want to give this a pass. There are boatloads of pianists (women and men) just as interesting or more so and in the vocal department, Krall is definitely nothing special. There are so many talented singers out there working their asses off just to get noticed, that it seems a shame so many are stuck on Krall as the best thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately, she’s like Wonder Bread—nutritionally empty and packed with white flour—when what one wants is a loaf of dense seven-grain bread.