Sasha Dobson - Girl Talk (2021)

If your dad is an experienced jazz pianist, like Smith Dobson, who worked with Bobby Hutcherson for twenty years, and your mom is a jazz vocalist, like Gail Dobson, then you have little choice. One way is to send the utterly annoying music to hell and do something else, the second is to follow in the footsteps of your parents. Sasha Dobson, like her brother Smith Dobson Jr., chose the second path. She became a singer and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a songwriter, and has worked in a variety of projects for many years. Of particular note is the Puss n Boots trio, where Sasha sings with Catherine Popper and the famous Nora Jones, as well as concert tours with Neil Young.

Sasha Dobson's new album Girl Talk is perhaps her most interesting work so far. As Dobson herself says, “All the albums I've done in the past - both under my own name and in collaboration with other artists - have always been a new challenge for me, I've always learned something from them. But what has not yet happened in my twenty-year career is the recordings to which I have finally grown. " This is the meaning given to Girl Talk by the performer herself. This album was recorded with her old partners, the Scott-Miner-Vollesen trio, and it was bassist Neil Miner who gave Sasha his title track with the ironic name Girl Talk. But especially important for this recording was the guest, the wonderful guitarist Peter Bernstein. Feeling subtly the nature of each composition, he composed a wonderful duet with Dobson. As for jazz vocalism, without striking with the power of his voice, Sasha Dobson wins in clear intonation, a sense of swing and a skillful balance between lyrics and scat vocals. The program of the album also included some of her great songs of her own, such as Better Days or You’re the Death of Me. True, for me the peak of the album was Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps, where another guest, another friend of Sasha, the Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, joins the musicians. On the whole, Girl Talk is a good example of modern vocal jazz, happily avoiding turning to famous standards sung a thousand times by hundreds of performers.