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My One And Only Thrill is Melody Gardot's aptly named second album, a follow up to 2008's warmly received jazz opus A Worrisome Heart. That bastion of dinner party jazz fluff Norah Jones is often cited as the closest pigeon hole, but Gardot writes her own songs and infuses them with an emotional musicality that Jones does not compete with.
A swirl of classic strings opens Baby I'm A Fool, trickling into lush acoustic guitar. Jazzy brush drum strokes punctuate a smooth, timeless, lilting rhythm. Gardot indulges in a little scat singing; a stream bubbling over pebbles.
If The Stars Were Mine is a '50s lounge number, perfectly showcasing that silken voice. A little like Sinatra if Sinatra had drank less, listened more and lived in Philadelphia, not Vegas.
Sultry finger clicks and an even sultrier lyric spell the start of Who Will Comfort Me. Over a beguiling blues shuffle, Gardot regales us with tales of her weary soul. "Who will comfort me?" she asks. Her words are bereft but her tone bears the assurance of one flanked by accomplished jazz saxophonists.
Your Heart Is Black As Night is a love song laced with impending heartbreak. Gardot's voice prowls around the melody before pouncing on it like Jessica Rabbit slowly lying across the back of a baby grand in a smoke-filled jazz dive in downtown 1920s Manhattan.
On Lover Undercover, her voice is a sweetly yearning jazz whisper as gently rippling piano caresses undulate across '60's Bond love scene strings.
Brooding, atmospheric strings usher in the melancholy arrangement of Our Love Is Easy, a seemingly incongruous backdrop to a sweetly sung paean to effortless love. Les Etioles is a shuffling, shimmying chanson, evoking late night street performances in Paris, a slightly drunken crowd bewitched by the chanteuse.
The street dance spirit of the former song evaporates into still, solitary yearning on The Rain, a slow blues song, achingly carved into the air by a lone piano, haunting saxophone licks and occasional bass stabs.
The eponymous song finds Gardot at her most breathy and tremulous. Bittersweet strings cascade gently into light, fluffy piano as she sighs and murmurs sweet somethings to her lover. A warm swell of strings floats Gardot's voice along the percussion-free offering of Deep Within The Corners Of My Mind.
The only unoriginal song on the album, Over The Rainbow is a gentle samba cover that undermines the soulful blues musicality separating Gardot from cabaret cover artists like Norah Jones. There is nothing wrong with it; sunny and upbeat, it provides a little breezy major key cheeriness in an album of husky minor key trappings. It just doesn't really add much either.
The final, untitled song is a reworking of If The Stars Were Mine with a full orchestra. It is testament to some deft work on the album arrangement that it often sounds as though a full orchestra had been at producer Larry Klein's desposal throughout.
When she was 19, Melody Gardot was hit by a car when cycling. She was part paralysed and suffered injuries to her brain. Music therapy was suggested to her as a way to encourage healing in her neural pathways. Gardot's wistful, breathy voice belies her youth and the unobtrusive competence of this album effortlessly belies the difficulties she has striven to overcome.
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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees
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