Here’s an intriguingly original jazz vocal album by Uk born singer/songwriter Leila Adu. She also plays piano and keyboards, and forms a trio on this album with bassist Jon Toscano and drummer David Frazier, with some of the songs here supplemented at times by the PUBLIQuartet string quartet of Curtis Stewart/vi, Jannina Norpoth/vi, Nick Revel/va, Hamilton Berry/cel and Jacob Bills/dr-voc.
Adu’s vocal tone and style feels like a mix of the social passion and enunciation of a Nina Simone with a dash of the other wordliness of Nico, and it works well on this collection of songs that come across like German cabaret circa Kurt Weill.
With the core team, Adu’s Mozartian piano goes bohemian on the show tune-ish title track, while her keyboards give a soul pop vibe on “Sky” and the ricocheting “Book”. The strings add a gypsy flavor to Adu’s clear enunciation on the static prismatic pulse of “Moonstone” while they get Bartokian on the bohemian “Snakepit”. Adu and strings get reflective on the kaleidoscopic yet poetic rubato of “God Yod” and artsy on the richly textured “Tar Sands”. The lyrics themselves range from romance to oil extraction adding to the mosaic colors of the album creating a work of art that looks clearer when standing back a few feet. This lady is on to something, both sonically and stylistically, forming a rich and personal language of her own. When’s she touring?