MUSIC FOR LIVING: John Hollenbeck, Jess Klein, Norah Jones, Christina Courtin, Murali Coryell, Regina Spektor

John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble
Eternal Interlude
Sunnyside
www.sunnysiderecords.com

Grammy voters could have done worse than nominating Eternal Interlude for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. (It didn’t win.) At least it brought this meritorious effort some much-needed attention. And indeed, there are aspects of John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble that resemble a jazz big-band. The twenty-member group looks like a big band, comprised mostly of horns and reeds. But as a composer and arranger, Hollenbeck paints with his band, and his palette includes classical minimalism, funk, Indonesian gamelan, ethnic folk, open-ended, progressive rock, and, yes, jazz—sometimes all in one number. It’s precisely Hollenbeck’s freedom with his materials and, as a drummer, his persistent grounding in propulsive groove that make him one of the most exciting contemporary composers and this album one of his greatest achievements.
 

Jess Klein
Bound to Love
UFO
www.ufomusic.com

The upstate New York native who climbed the rungs of the Boston singer-songwriter scene in the 1990s moved to Austin last year, and her latest recording shows evidence of the transition. There has always been an Americana chick-rocker lurking inside the sweet, baby-voiced, acoustic-guitar strumming Jess Klein, and on Bound to Love she’s given full rein on rollicking, sexy numbers including “When the Time Comes” and, especially, “Putty.” Klein leans toward country on “It Will Come to Me” and “Fool,” on which Slaid Cleaves joins her for vocal harmonies and a verse. The sum effect is of a fully developed artist; call her the missing link between Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin.

Norah Jones
The Fall
Blue Note
www.bluenote.com

The Fall could well have been titled Another Side of Norah Jones. Instead of the dreamy country-jazz singer, Jones presents herself here as a doyenne of downtown indie-pop on a baker’s dozen tunes mostly recorded with a new group of collaborators, including producer Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, and Modest Mouse). She shares a few co-songwriting credits with Ryan Adams and Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, as well as her frequent partner Jesse Harris, but she handles most of the writing chores, as well as guitars and pianos. If this is a concept album, it’s about the breakup of a relationship, urban style, and, appropriately enough, Jones gets soulful on several cuts, including the funky “It’s Gonna Be.” She ties it all up with a joke at the end—a love song to her dog, the “Man of the Hour.” Her dusky voice works just fine in this new musical setting, which should appeal to old fans and make a whole lot of new ones, especially those with a hankering for a gutsier, harder-rocking Norah Jones.

Christina Courtin
Christina Courtin
Nonesuch
www.nonesuch.com

Poised somewhere between the old Norah Jones and the new Regina Spektor, singer-songwriter Christina Courtin is an upstate New York native and a violin-playing Juilliard alumna who has worked with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and whose debut solo album features jazz-bassist producer Greg Cohen (John Zorn), members of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Bill Frisell sideman Greg Leisz, and multi-instrumental genius Jon Brion (Aimee Mann) on songs that range from back-porch ukelele folksongs to midcentury pre-rock pop to Beatles-like chamber-rock. Courtin leaves the violin-playing for others on her debut recording, which features a dozen eclectic songs whose musicality is matched by her gorgeous, if at times quirky, vocals that channel Billie Holiday and Dawn Upshaw as well as Norah Jones. In the end, the album really announces the arrival of a major new talent, one that should have no less of an impact than Jones’s debut, Come Away with Me.

Murali Coryell
Sugar Lips
Murali’s Music
www.muralicoryell.com

Murali Coryell really only shares two things with his more famous dad, the jazz-rock fusion pioneer Larry Coryell: they both play guitar, and they’re both incredibly talented. But rockin’ blues and R&B is the genre favored by Coryell fils, and as heard on his latest recording, the guy can play and sing with the best of them. His vocals are impossibly gritty and soulful, and producer Tom Hambridge knew just where to place some horns and keyboards to give Coryell’s original tunes room to breathe and expand. This kid was brought up on music, as he sings on “Music Sets You Free,” and as a result, he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of other white bluesmen, including Delbert McClinton, Duke Robillard, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and, yes, Eric Clapton.

Regina Spektor
Far
Sire
www.sirerecords.com
 

It took four producers, including Jeff Lynne, Mike Elizondo, and David Kahne, to craft Regina Spektor’s latest effort, but not even hitmakers and soundshapers like these could keep Spektor from being Spektor. Her songs are driven by her Rachmaninoff-like piano melodies, her swirling, multiple-octave crystalline vocals, and her inerrant sense for lyrical riffs and dynamics. In fact, Spektor’s words are as a much part of the musical mix as any other element. Who else but a Moscow-born, Bronx-raised classical musician could write a catchy pop song about linguistics (“Eet”), make an album about religion and alienation, impersonate a dolphin, and sound like she’s laughing all the way through one of the most intellectual and entertaining rock albums of the decade?  [MARCH/APRIL 2010]