Sarah Moule / A lazy kind of love / Vortex newsletter
15 July 2008
Vortex NewsletterChris Parker
Although she does occasionally scat and is clearly influenced by
jazz phrasing, Sarah Moule is best described - as in her publicity
material - as ‘one of the UK's foremost interpreters of modern song'.
On this Red Ram album (a previous couple were made for Linn), she
concentrates her intelligent and subtle vocal powers on material
written by an extraordinarily fertile songwriting team, pianist Simon
Wallace and Fran Landesman. Their songs range from the sensuous
title-track (co-written with Julie Birchill), given an appropriately
languorous treatment by Moule, through sexily witty blues-based pieces
(‘Hyde Side Blues', which addresses the Jekyll and Hyde theme from a
slightly unusual angle) to wry explorations of the emotional balancing
acts involved in love affairs - all impeccably delivered by Moule, who
is able to express both straightforward emotion and artily literate
complexities (‘You're an island of Chekhov in a Disney throng') with
equal ease and assurance. With the originals tastefully complemented by
a couple of standards, the Styne/Cahn classic ‘I Fall in Love Too
Easily' (delicately latinised) and the Bob Dorough/Terrell Kirk Jr
swinger ‘Devil May Care' (which brings to mind Claire Martin, whom
Moule slightly resembles in her ability to combine conversational
informality with discreet artfulness), and the whole flawlessly
performed by the core band of Wallace himself, bassist Mark
Hodgson/Alec Dankworth and drummer Paul Robinson - sporadically
supplemented by guitarist Mike Outram, shakuhachi player Clive Bell,
saxophonist Alan Barnes and percussionist Paul Clarvis - this is a fine
album that manages to combine immediate accessibility with considerable
subtlety.
Related Links
Sarah Moule
A Lazy Kind of Love