John's Blog

Austin, the self-professed “Live Music Capital of the World,” has a surprise in store. Well known for folk and blues, there’s a new rising star in the Capital City in the genre of jazz — traditional, vocal jazz. Her name is Kat Edmonson, and with her new CD, she is inviting you to Take To the Sky.

Readers may have heard Edmonson’s voice before, as she appeared on American Idol in 2002 singing Peggy Lee’s “Fever.” Unfortunately, she was not to advance.

On her debut album, Edmonson’s rich, smoky voice is accompanied by skillful musicians blended together by engineer Al Schmitt. Schmitt is a veteran of the 1960s who accumulated 19 Grammys and has worked with Diana Krall, Steely Dan, Ray Charles, and Frank Sinatra among many others. Possibly as a result of his involvement, the work is accomplished and beyond the skill and range of most debut albums on regional labels.

Edmonson tackles jazz standards and reinvents pop/rock hits, blending jazz with pop and bossa-nova in a captivating gumbo full of surprises. The disc starts off with staccato piano chords that quickly reveal the Gershwin classic “Summertime,” complete with horn solo and ending in a surprise coda quoting from the “Feeling Good” popularized by Nina Simone. The pace picks up with an energetic cover of “Night and Day,” played with passion and delivered with sultry sass.

Edmonson makes modern pop/rock material her own, with songs and arrangements that aren’t recognized until the vocals begin. First is slow bossa nova version of “Just Like Heaven” by the Cure, sung rather like a lullaby. “(Just Like) Starting Over” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, a pop/rock hit from the early 1980s, becomes a very slow jazz ballad that woos the listener and sounds nothing like the original — and which serves as an inventive, worthy remake.

Throughout, Edmonson’s voice handles the range of the songs and delivers emotion in a soothing, pasty smoke of crooning. Grab a martini and enjoy!

One could sum this up with a single sentence: Miles is cool. This CD is subtitled “The Very Best Of,” which is somewhat of a stretch, but this one succeeds as a great single-disc selection of Davis’ cool jazz for a party.

Miles Davis’ career covers 50 years and encompassed roles including bandleader, trumpeter and composer. Davis’ Kind of Blue is often cited as the ultimate jazz album, the one jazz CD a music fan should have in his collection if only one were an option. Given his influence on classic jazz, it’s hard to imagine condensing his best work into a skimpy 13 track CD. Only in its extreme ambition does this collection fail; it succeeds glowingly as a teaser, an overview of the great man’s work that is easy to listen to and includes enough well-known material to keep a casual fan interested. It adds other quality “album tracks” and lesser known material that both help respect the artist’s “cool” reputation while being strong enough to motivate a new listener to explore.

The compilation starts with “So What” from Kind of Blue, that title’s only representative here, which starts the album off with an easy swinging tone. Other well known tunes represented here include “Summertime,” the Gershwin number from Porgy and Bess; and “Milestones,” the fantastic up-tempo masterpiece. The fantastic “Seven Steps to Midnight” features an up tempo bass line and great interaction between Miles’ horn and the piano, and shows his evolution after the disbandment of the Kind of Blue quintet. Mixed in with the other classic selections is a rarity for Davis single disc compilations, the relaxing track “Générique” from the 1957 French film Ascenseur pour L’Echafaud. Altogether, there’s plenty of great music to keep listeners entertained, relaxed and amazed.

The material spans from 1956 to 1984, unfortunately skipping his earliest recordings for other labels. While most of the selections from the 1950s and 1960s are intriguing, the decision to skip Davis’ jazz/rock experimental work in the 1970s and to feature two pop music covers from the 1980s is slightly surprising. “Time After Time,” an interpretation of the Cyndi Lauper hit, and the Michael Jackson single “Human Nature,” while part of Davis’ exploration of pop music interpretation in his later career, add accessibility rather than coolness to the collection.

The CD ends on a high note with a remix of a 1969 track called “It’s About that Time” featuring Carlos Santana on guitar; this is a nice touch that complements the fantastic sidemen featured in the rest of the album’s work — such as John Coltrane, ‘Cannonball’ Adderley, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea among others. Overall, the disc is a great — if slightly unpredictable collection of tracks from the most influential part of Davis’ career, and is strongly recommended.

Muse, a British three-piece band with tremendous following in the UK and winner of multiple “Best Live Act” awards in 2004 and 2005, recently topped the UK charts and further introduced itself to American audiences with its new CD, Black Holes and Revelations. The album surprised some by debuting at #9 on the Billboard 200 album chart — proof that its profile is increasing in the States.

Muse first gained radio airplay here with “Muscle Museum” from its first album Showbiz, which reached number 25. Its second album, Origin of Symmetry, showed a great deal of growth, and is probably its most cohesive and consistent record — although its American label allegedly considered the work “too European,” so it was not released Stateside until after its subsequent album Absolution, which reintroduced the band to America. The heavy hook-laden single “Hysteria” from that album broke the top 10 on modern rock radio, and the band toured small clubs followed by somewhat larger ones in an effort to bring its powerful live show to the audience and thereby to develop interest in its work.

Four years later, Black Holes is released and is easily the band’s most diverse and most developed work to date. It both shows the maturation of a gifted act and simultaneously overwhelms some listeners with its diverse instrumentation. Lyrically, the band continues on.  It’s definitely worth ignoring the naysayers, as this is a brilliant work that establishes the band among the upper echelon of modern rock acts.

The first single in the UK, “Supermassive Black Hole,” is a sparingly-arranged dance-rock/disco tune sung in falsetto–which though debuting at #1 in the UK, was not chosen to be released here. This is perhaps due to the perception of singer Matt Bellamy’s high-register vocals as unpleasant. The single chosen instead is the epic “Knights of Cydonia,” which has thus far peaked at #19 on the Alternative charts. I find this a peculiar choice as the first two minutes are instrumental-only, reminiscent of early Genesis–its driving instrumentation is a good choice for heavy rockers among the audience, but the song lacks the sing-along chorus that gave “Hysteria” wider appeal.

The album starts with “Take a Bow,” featuring arpeggiated keyboard reminiscent of “New Born,” the concert staple that opened Symmetry. This song expands into vocal histrionics, an electronica break, and then heavy guitar — in essence a good introduction to the band. Other themes and sounds are explored as the album progresses, including some Depeche Mode-style keyboard riffs in “Starlight” and “Map of the Problematique,” some broad and precise Queen-like background vocals on “Soldier’s Poem,” military-march drumwork on “Invincible,” and an infectious flamenco rhythm on “City of Delusion.” In keeping with its modern rock roots, several other tracks honor the band’s alternative-rock influences, which are said to include Rage Against the Machine.

Muse has outgrown its earlier comparisons to Radiohead, and is no longer simply what Radiohead might have become had it continued in its OK Computer direction. Bellamy’s classical piano interludes, prominently featured in Absolution, are only the beginning of the band’s experimentation on this album. Muse has truly grown into its own.