Closer To You : The Pop Side

Record Collector - 4 stars out of 5 -- [With] striking interpretations....The effect is hauntingly beautiful..." Record Collector (magazine) (p.98) - 4 stars out of 5 -- [With] striking interpretations....The effect is hauntingly beautiful..."

It seems de rigueur for jazz vocalists to record standards, and Cassandra Wilson has upheld the tradition on albums like 2007's LOVERLY, which dipped into the American songbook for tunes by Duke Ellington, Lerner & Loewe, and Rodgers & Hammerstein.The other side of Wilson's interpretive skills can be sampled on 2009's CLOSER TO YOU: THE POP SIDE, a compilation of previously released Cassandra Wilson covers of modern rock, pop, and soul classics.
Whether reinventing the Monkee's "Last Train to Clarksville", Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey", or Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman", Wilson's husky, ethereal voice and intensely focused readings make the tunes her own. Wilson favors spare, ghostly arrangements, and the album's true highlights (such as U2's "Love is Blindness" and Neil Young's "Harvest Moon") represent her at her most intimate and vulnerable, pouring emotion through every carefully stylized phrase. As a listening experience, CLOSER TO YOU is all-absorbing, and required listening for any contemporary vocal jazz fan.|