Anita Wardell - The Road (2019)

Tracklist

01. Travels / The Road
02. You're My Thrill
03. Without a Song
04. With Every Breath I Take
05. Frevo em Maceió
06. Surrey with the Fringe on Top
07. Superwoman
08. Mirrors
09. Você e Eu



Anita Wardell, the Australia-raised vocalist who appeared on the UK scene in the 1990s, makes albums that deploy familiar vocal-jazz methods and plenty of well-travelled standard songs, but also demonstrate a real care for her art. This set finds her accompanied by a sophisticated quintet led by her regular pianist Robin Aspland, on a repertoire mixing standards such as You're My Thrill and Without a Song with material by Pat Metheny, Bobby Hutcherson, Hermeto Pascoal and Stevie Wonder. Wardell's own lyrics are confidingly delivered over the country-song sway of Metheny's and Lyle Mays' Travels/The Road, and You're My Thrill stretches and swoops between an eerily distracted hover and straight jazz time. Pascoal's Frevo Em Maceio is a vehicle for Wardell's boppish agility, skipping flutelike over the mercurial melody, and she quietly caresses the meanings out of Stevie Wonder's Superwoman with an expertise that never betrays a hint of artifice. An unobtrusively classy vocal album.

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