Blue Tunes

Although Melody Gardot has experimented with several styles and rhythms of music during her career, her roots in quiet, reflective jazz have always remained, sometimes more above the surface, sometimes less. With her fifth studio album, Sunset in the Blue, Gardot circles back to those roots but expands her palette to add orchestral arrangements to the spare drums, keys and bass that brought her into the business on Worrisome Heart. The result is a wonderful time tunnel to the middle of the 20th century; a simultaneously relaxing and recharging visit to the era when vocalists reigned supreme in the craft.

Sunset opens with "If You Love Me," a plea to the potential lover to declare his feelings and intentions -- but gently and carefully, as might befit a couple who have both seen their share of hurried heartbreak: "Come in close but come in slowly, now." "C'est Magnifique" follows, mostly in Portuguese and easily  one of the most beautiful performances Gardot has ever recorded -- her voice light enough on the ear it wouldn't leave tracks in the snow as she and Portuguese vocalist António Zambujo trade back and forth in a duet that sounds for all the world like the opening theme to a lost Audrey Hepburn movie. The title track is a wistful lament on the inevitable passage of time, and Gardot tucks two more numbers in Portuguese into the middle of the album, the dreamy "Um Biejo" and peppy "Ninguém, Ninguém." The latter's upbeat rhythm belies its   wistful reflection on a past relationship -- perhaps one of the same ones that brought the singer of the first track to her caution about going slow.

"From Paris With Love" is a sketch of an afternoon in one of that city's cafés, moving then into the reflective "Ave Maria" and delicately lovely covers of Henry Mancini's "Moon River" and Frank Sinatra's version of Sammy Cahn's "I Fall in Love too Easily."

"Little Something," a duet with Sting, closes the album with a bright dance floor rhythm the covers up the two protagonists promising each other that they "could be a little something," a playful kind of fling without the baggage and attachment that weighed down the relationships that each of them had before. But both have a hint of desperation in their words. On the one hand they try to convince the other that such a fling would be a fun, no-strings-attached time together. But on the other they sound as if they're trying to convince themselves that they can enter such a relationship without developing the attachments from the past -- and trying a little too hard, at that.

Although her experimentation yielded some good music, the return to this style of quiet jazz makes it clear where Gardot's strengths as a songwriter and vocalist lie. Sunset offers evidence that even within that style there's plenty of room to stretch as an artist and still make one of the year's top vocal albums.

Edited on 10/27/20 to correct lyric quote.