It’s still fairly rare to see established pop stars turn to jazz artists to bring a new twist to their sound. To my mind, the most successful of these projects must be the early Sting solo albums and we’re talking more than 25 years ago now.
Paul McCartney is established a pop star as exists today and he has taken a distinctly jazz turn on his “Kisses on the Bottom,” out today. The former Beatle has recorded nothing less than a jazz vocal album and has the band to prove it – Diane Krall heads an ensemble that includes guitarists John and Bucky Pizzarelli, bassists John Clayton and Christian McBride and drummers Jeff Hamilton and Karriem Riggins. Here are some of the initial reviews:
REUTERS: There's a new Diana Krall album out, though it has Paul McCartney on vocals and his name on the cover. This is all a good thing. All right, so that's a severely reductive way to describe McCartney's fine new album of old standards, "Kisses on the Bottom."
But it's clear Macca ceded a great deal of creative control to Krall, who plays piano on every track but one and is credited with the rhythm arrangements, and her longtime producer Tommy LiPuma, not to mention frequent Krall collaborators like orchestrator Johnny Mandel.
As painful as Rod Stewart's standards albums could be, that's how pleasurable McCartney's is. He isn't speaking in a completely adopted, foreign idiom, for one thing, and for another, the song choices haven't been chosen with the sort of Standards for Dummies commercial optimization Stewart employed at every exhaustingly obvious turn. And if you know Krall and LiPuma, you know the arrangements won't be beating anyone about the head any more than the song selections are.
About half the songs are done jazz quartet-style, or something close to it, and about half add Mandel's trademark barely-there orchestration. The syrup-intolerant need not fear: A light touch prevails throughout.
A younger Macca might've added a lot of "ooby dooby" flourishes, but it sounds as if he felt so deferential to the serious jazzbos on hand … that he felt the need to keep it cool.
MONTREAL GAZETTE: The disc's most impressive accomplishment, perhaps, is in reminding us that McCartney - who has few peers as a songwriter, performer and musician - is also a great singer. Leaving the instrumental work to Diana Krall and her band, who perform with understated grace, Sir Paul focuses on delivery and interpretation. In a voice that's invariably supple and smooth, he frequently slips into his higher register for the sweet touch needed in songs like “It's Only a Paper Moon” and “Home (When Shadows Fall).”
There's charm and wit to spare, too, as McCartney sinks his teeth into “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” and “My Very Good Friend the Milkman,” also covered recently by Eric Clapton, who appears on this disc.
McCartney also contributed two originals: “Only Our Hearts” and the superb “My Valentine,” seemingly a celebration of his wife's upbeat attitude. Both fit like a glove among the album's 14 songs. And why wouldn't they? If there's one thing McCartney has obviously valued over the 50-plus years he's been writing, it's craftsmanship. And these are the songs from which he learned it.
WASHINGTON POST: For his adventure in vocal jazz, McCartney has wisely chosen Diana Krall’s band to back him. On tracks such as “Home (When Shadows Fall),” it provides a warm, spacious bed for McCartney’s subtle vocal. Poignantly, there’s a hint of gravel in the voice of the eternally youthful McCartney, but it’s a touch that lends gravity to his performance. Throughout the album, he sounds startlingly at ease with the idiom, crooning like Chet Baker on “Get Yourself Another Fool” and swinging like Sinatra on “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.”
So comfortable and energized does McCartney sound that the question is not why he decided to make a vocal jazz record, but why he hasn’t done it before. Like Nick Lowe’s recent series of wry twilight musings, “Kisses on the Bottom” proves to be an affecting exercise in insinuating nostalgia.
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