I considered calling this week's playlist "music for the grown and sexy," but that tag is tired and overused. Yet it's an adequate description of the recently released CDs I've been spinning at home and in the car. The styles range from adventurous vocal jazz to hip-hop-laced modern R&B -- mature music you definitely won't hear on commercial pop and urban radio.
Cassandra Wilson, Loverly: It took some time for me to get into this Mississippi jazz star. I discovered Wilson in 1995 when I bought a copy of New Moon Daughter, her Grammy-winning album released that year. Knowing nothing about her music, I dug the CD cover, which featured an artful shot of a topless Wilson, back turned to the camera. But when I first played the album, I hated the brooding vocals and rambling, sparse arrangements. The CD sat on the shelf for a few years before I returned to it with an open mind. I've been a fan ever since.
In the past 12 years, Wilson has released a string of explorative albums building on her approach that weaves rustic, folkish instrumentation with slow-simmering Southern blues and sophisticated jazz phrasing.
On Loverly, her seventh album on Blue Note Records, the singer-songwriter breathes new life into tunes from the American Songbook. It's the first time she has released a set of mostly standards since 1988's Blue Skies, her fine album on the JMT label.
Recorded in her hometown of Jackson, Miss., Loverly is a warmly sensual effort whose grace, intelligence and refreshing sense of whimsy gently wash over you with repeated listens. But the album still manages to be one of Wilson's more immediate sets. It's also her most satisfying release since 2003's Glamoured. Wilson's interaction with the intimate band feels organic. With that smoked, soothing voice, Wilson never rushes songs. Cuts such as the dreamy "Black Orpheus" and the tender "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," on which Wilson duets with Marvin Sewell's shimmering acoustic guitar, unfurl beautifully. Lately in the jazz and pop worlds, there has been a dearth of vocal-standards albums, but Loverly is one of few that really matters.
Incognito, Tales From the Beach: You can always depend on this British acid-jazz collective for solid cosmopolitan albums, rippling with swinging horns and soul-rich vocals. For Tales, Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick, Incognito's chieftain and visionary, evokes the buoyant music he heard from hotel bands while growing up around the beaches of Mauritius, an island off the coast of Madagascar. The music, inflected with punchy horns, is decidedly loose and breezy and evocative of sultry summer nights.
