ALISON MOYET
Voice
Sanctuary Records
Pop chanteuse Alison Moyet’s new release,
Voice, casts her as something of the Dusty Springfield
of our generation. Like Springfield, Moyet has an instinctive,
organic sense of drama and phrasing that gives her a greater
range of interpretation of material than the average pop
singer. In short, the girl has chops despite her pop music
pedigree. She’s not a jazz singer, really, here, nor
do I think she aspires to be. She is a cabaret singer, and
it would seem that any nightspot with Moyet as its resident
singer would probably be filled to capacity.
The touchstones on Voice are a series
of performances that place Moyet firmly within the tradition
of serious interpreters of contemporary popular music—even
though she strays away from that with a series of very old
popular songs that include English folk ballads and French
art songs. The opening track, “Windmills of Your Mind”
was recorded by Springfield on her landmark Dusty In
Memphis album, and it serves Moyet very well indeed.
Michel Legrand’s spiraling minor key melody seems
as natural as breathing to Alison. She also possesses the
ability to push the song’s drama to its breaking point,
but no further. In fact, one of the really great things
about Moyet’s performances here is her sense of restraint.
Her performances summon the mood necessary to put the song
across, but they are uniformly not oversung.
The next touchstone moment on the CD is Moyet’s
performance of the Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach-penned
“God Give Me Strength.” Perhaps because Elvis
is a known Dusty fan (he wrote the song “Just a Memory”
with her singing in mind), as well as the fact that the
Bacharach-influenced arrangement recalls numerous recordings
he made with Dionne Warwick as vocalist, one hears this
performance and instinctively accepts that Moyet is both
an excellent vocalist and an incredibly talented interpreter
of other people’s songs. That sense is echoed by the
bonus track, a performance of the song “Alfie.”
The other big, big moment here is when Moyet
performs “Cry Me a River.” First, because it
again anchors her within the tradition of pop music chanteuse,
recalling jazzy pop singer Julie London as well as the early
club days of Sade, who used to perform a knockout version
of the song with her band. Again, Moyet resists the urge
to belt it out, not because she can’t (which her fans
certainly know) but because she is making different choices,
and that’s the mark of a mature singer.
Moyet’s collaborator on this CD is pianist/arranger
Anne Dudley, who is perhaps best known as one third of the
British experimental pop band Art of Noise. Dudley is no
stranger to the pop music world, having worked with producer
Trevor Horn as an arranger and keyboardist on such recordings
as ABC’s Lexicon of Love and Frankie Goes
to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes.” Following
her tenure in Art of Noise she arranged music for a list
of performers that includes Seal, Travis, Phil Collins,
Pulp, and Elton John. Dudley not only arranged and produced
the music on Voice, but also plays piano on most of the
tracks. She provides Moyet with solid, supportive arrangements
that neither upstage the singer nor leave her hanging.
Besides the aforementioned pop standards,
Moyet also takes a turn at Bizet’s “Je Crois
Entendre Encore,” Jacques Brel’s “La Chanson
Des Vieux Amants,” Henry Purcell’s “Dido’s
Lament,” and the traditional English folk song “The
Wraggle Taggle Gypsies-O!” She handles these excursions
into classical, folk, and art song with equal aplomb, providing
convincing performances that are neither lacking in passion
nor over the top.
For Alison Moyet’s longtime fans, Voice
is a wonderful new chapter in an already illustrious career.
For those not terribly familiar with the singer’s
previous work, it’s a fine opportunity to discover
her talent.
