Madeleine Peyroux • Let's Walk Thirty Tigers 79437LP
 hen the news dropped that the gifted song interpreter Madeleine
Peyroux was releasing an album of self-penned compositions, I felt a little trepidation.
Ella Fitzgerald never wrote an album’s worth of songs herself for good reason;
singing lyrics and melodies by the world’s best composers tends to caution people to
stay in their own lanes.
It didn’t take more than two or three songs on side one of Let’s Walk to know that my fears were unfounded. Peyroux and her longtime collaborator and co-writer Jon Herington have clearly learned a thing or two from the masterworks they’ve been performing together for so many years. Some of the best evidence of this is “Blues for Heaven.” It’s got a southern, Hoagy Carmichaelesque, melancholy charm that perfectly suits Peyroux’s languorous delivery. On side two, the bilingual Peyroux infuses “Et Puis” with sultry elocution that practically melts the microphone. This introspective chanson transports me back to my own contemplative strolls along the Seine and Champs-Elysées. Even when exploring more serious subjects, Peyroux delivers the goods. When she tackles the sticky state of international affairs and her country’s role in it on “How I Wish,” her sly description of the various shades of her “American heart” is enough to make a reasonable patriot squirm. Even the weakest cuts on the album are not deal-breakers. For example, while the decision to use a distorted wah-wah peddle on “Please Come on Inside” seems tacked on and detracts a bit from the composition, it’s not enough to ruin the overall inviting warmth of the track. On the end of side two, the sing-songy “Take Care” strikes me as a little too cute for its own good, but it’s easy enough to simply lift the tonearm a few minutes early. Thanks to the excellent production work of Emmy- and Grammy-winning Elliot Scheiner (Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles), every instrument here has realistic weight and sounds tonally and timbrally true. Herington, whose guitar work can be heard on Steely Dan and Lucy Kaplanski recordings, is given just the right amount of room to adorn each composition with tasteful fills and lyrical lines. Scheiner’s lush soundscape struck a friend of mine as “a little too engineered,” but I’m not bothered by a finely polished production. My only quibble with the sonics here is that Peyroux’s voice doesn’t get quite the spotlight it does on recordings like Careless Love and Half the Perfect World. It’s a minor distraction and doesn’t take away from the overall impact of the album. The best news here is that vinyl mastering duties were assigned to the talented Chris Muth, who cut his teeth over the past couple of decades at The Hit Factory, Sterling Sound and Masterdisk. Based upon a comparison of the Qobuz and Tidal 24-bit/96kHz streams of pre-release singles, Muth has insured that the impressive dynamic range of Grammy-winning sound engineer Darcy Proper’s digital master is captured in the grooves of this pressing. Bass notes resonate deeply and high-frequency information comes across naturally, free of brittleness and sibilance. The flat 160-gram cobalt-blue vinyl is a nice aesthetic match to the album’s packaging and mood, but there’s a tad more surface noise than I hear on the very best pressings. Peyroux recently celebrated her 50th birthday. This can
be a tough watermark for artists. Some grow bitter and spend the rest of their careers
trying to replicate past glories or pondering what might have been. Peyroux has chosen a
different response to this chronological Rubicon. She’s taken life’s lessons,
turned up the fire underneath her skillet and cooked up something truly delicious. Kudos
to Thirty Tigers for putting it on vinyl worthy of the dish. |
