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MADELEINE PEYROUX
AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME
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Madeleine Peyroux’s two sold-out shows at the Regattabar last Thursday night were a long time coming. The last time she hit town was around the release of Dreamland on Atlantic in 1996. She gave a confused performance at the House of Blues, the album went on to sell 200,000 copies, and she disappeared until last year, when the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter William Galison released a duo album with her, Got You on My Mind, and Rounder released Careless Love. A fall concert date was cancelled when the presenter, Equinox Music Festival, went under. Thursday’s show had been postponed from a January date at the R-bar (already sold out) because of a reported last-minute TV engagement. She was worth the wait. Peyroux’s timbre and phrasing recall Billie Holiday, but the sensibility on her solo albums is her own — abetted by excellent song selection and simple, swinging arrangements. She mixes standards, originals, and blues with the occasional Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, or old Josephine Baker number. She doesn’t have a big voice or a wide tessitura. Her first number in the 70-minute second set was her own "Don’t Wait Too Long" (written with producer Larry Klein and Nora Jones collaborator Jesse Harris), and at first she seemed to be swallowing her words — they hardly traveled past the stage monitors. It was a bit of a shock after opener Sonya Kitchell, who has vocal chops and volume to spare. But though Kitchell also has great range, a flexible vibrato, and an ingratiating manner, her material was folk-song predictable. Peyroux had material — and chops enough to keep you on the edge of your seat every minute. Playing a small acoustic guitar and working with a piano/bass/drums trio, she’d fall behind the beat, rush ahead, take little dipping melismatic bends, stretching one syllable into three or four. But the effect was unmannered. Whereas Kitchell tended to focus everything on the sound of her voice, Peyroux created musical suspense. Is she going to hit that pitch? Come out on time at the end of the measure? It was a suspense that focused everything on the song: how was "Weary Blues," or "Careless Love," or Dylan’s "You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" going to turn out — songs that are a million years old. (Even Peyroux’s own material sounds old, lived in.) In her improvisations, with her cool, almost vibratoless delivery and constant refiguring of melody and emphasis, she seemed to be rethinking every song on the spot. The result was as emotional as it was musical.
BY JON GARELICK
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