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JOANIE PALLATTO My Original Plan |
SOUTHPORT [62:27] Open Your Eyes
Do Butterflies Cry?
The Blank Page
The Confessional
My Original Plan
Jon's Place
About a Song
Rest
The Photograph
Almost 65
A Simple Time
They Sentenced Us to Paradise
This Winter
Lucky to Belong to You
Joanie Pallatto (voice/vocals); Fareed Haque (guitar); Bradley Parker-Sparrow (piano); Howard Levy (harmonica); Bobby Lewis (trumpet); Juan Pastor (congas); Kurt Schweitz (bass); John Devlin (bass); Luiz Ewerling (drums); Steve Eisen (flute); Bill Nolte (voice/vocals)
Here’s an easy-going, lightly swinging album from Joannie Pallatto who is still at the top of her vocal game. It’s a 14-track album with varied personnel but with guitarist Fareed Haque, bassist John Devlin and drummer Luiz Ewerling as constant companions in the rhythm section, playing ably.
Pallatto has penned a high number of the songs herself – words and music – and the first thing to note is that this is more an album of evocative auto or seemingly auto-biography than jazz. There’s some lovely avian flute from Steve Eisen on Open Your Eyes, a Pallatto original with buoyant guitar accompaniment and some overdubbed vocals on Do Butterflies Cry? where her rich, warm voice can be savoured with just the trio backing. But, far from jazz, her songs are often vignettes, little narrative compressions that fit well with the relaxed often mid-tempo feel of the album. Sometimes she will go in for a kind of parlando as on The Confessional but this approach fits the material – this is a kind of ‘scena’ with a quasi-stage feel, a kind of mini Rock Musical element creeping in.
There’s a lightly funky feel here and there (My Original Plan), with a cosy, loping narrative background and some fine ballads, as in Jon’s Place and About a Song where pianist Howard Levy takes a good solo. There are meditative moments such as on The Photograph where trumpeter Bobby Lewis takes a rather Milesian obbligato on this melodically attractive number. Rest is a kind of reminiscence, as if sung to herself over the light accompaniment of just guitar and piano, whilst there’s a Reggae beat and a rocky-blues guitar solo – hint of Hotel California or just my imagination? - in They Sentenced Us to Paradise.
Some may find this all a bit too low-key, but I liked the album’s charming variety of moods and tones. Pallatto’s lyrics almost always work – not always but the miss rate is low - and the disc comes with a brightly coloured and attractive booklet.
Jonathan Woolf