Lauren Bush - All My Treasures (2016)

Toronto-bred and now London-based Lauren Bush introduces herself —on her debut, All My Treasures—as a traditional, vivacious, and supremely confident vocalist, in the mode of Ella Fitzgerald or Anita O'Day. And the tunes she calls her treasures are mostly from the familiar end of the Great American Songbook spectrum.

The voice is sassy/brassy, horn like, her diction as precise and sharp as knife blade, and her soul—that shines through, throughout—embraces these forays into twelve tunes with high-spirited panache, starting with Bob Dorough's "I've Got Just About Everything I Need." When she sings "I'll share all my treasures, my riches and pleasures, making two of us one..." she exudes such incandescent, wide-open-arms invitation, it's hard to see how she can be resisted.

Bush's masterful accompaniment, by pianist—and the set's producer—Liam Dunachie, along with a core trio of bassist Andrew Robb and drummer David Ingamells, keeps the sound crisp and tight, with some marvelous arrangements, fleshed out with horns on several tunes.

Bush's take on Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Dindi," a particular favorite here, floats in on a warm mist, a gorgeous voice sparely accompanied in the beginning by the light sparkle of Dunachie's piano, the heartbeat of Robb's bass, a sound that swells as Kieran McCloud's trombone blows in, as accompanist, then as a soulful soloist, giving way to Bush's lovely scatting.

The time-test "Sweet Georgia Brown" bops and grooves with a three horn brass section that rollicks into a New Orleans mood. "Doodlin,'" from bop giant Horace Silver's pen, swings mightlily pen; and Dave Mason's "Feeling' Alright," made famous by Joe Cocker, rides a funk train, propelled by Dunachie's wurlitzer electric piano, closing of this especially fine debut. ~DAN MCCLENAGHAN

Personnel:
Lauren Bush: vocals; Liam Dunachie: piano, Fender Rhodes (5); Wurlitzer electric piano (12); Andrew Robb: acoustic bass; David Ingamells: drums; Miguel Gorodi: trumpet (6, 9), flugelhorn (8); Brandon Allen: tenor saxophone (2, 4, 6, 7, 9); Kieran McLeod: trombone (3, 6, 9); Ian Shaw: background vocals (12).