Patty Waters began musical life as a rich, caffeinated jazz vocalist whose explorations of the darkest recesses of the Song saw her abandon the conventional trips and tropes of the genre in favour of a new vocabulary of shrieks, gasps and fearful, wordless utterances. This collection captures more of her velvet sweetness than her avant-starkness, and even includes a very persuasive commercial for Jax beer. However, tracks like “Why Can’t I Come To You?” knock today’s corporate-sponsored jazz vocalists into a pork pie hat, while “Touched By Rodin In A Paris Museum” is a brilliant extended showcase for the uneasy, Cageian minimalism of her piano playing.
DAVID STUBBS
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