The temptation to sigh heavily and bemoan another great rocker succumbing to the lure of \u201cthe standards\u201d fades instantly with the first note Boz Scaggs sings on his new disc, Speak Low<\/i>. After all, this is nothing Scaggs hasn\u2019t done before (But Beautiful<\/i> in 2003), and he actually has an affinity for this music.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s more than that. It\u2019s song choice, interpretation, phrasing, musicality, life experience. Boz can pull this off because it\u2019s part of who he is, not merely a marketing ploy to pump some life into a sagging career (see Rod Stewart). <\/p>\n
This is more than a smooth jazz quartet with a vocalist, though that\u2019s the feel of this intimate disc. Disc opener \u201cInvitation,\u201d written by Bronislaw Kaper and Paul Francis Webster, is a stunning tune that I\u2019m pleased to have found. With Gil Goldstein\u2019s piano and Mike Mainieri\u2019s vibes and, I believe, a bass clarinet providing the bed for Scaggs to lay his tender yet worldly vocals on — well, it\u2019s fine, fine, fine.<\/p>\n
One of the strengths of this disc is the deft mixing of what seem like brilliant finds (such as \u201cInvitation\u201d) with new readings of better known fare such as Rodgers and Hart\u2019s \u201cShe Was Too Good For Me,\u201d Ogden Nash and Kurt Weill\u2019s title track, and Hoagy Carmichael\u2019s \u201cSkylark.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Speak Low <\/i>is not perfect. There\u2019s the plodding \u201cI\u2019ll Remember April\u201d and \u201cDindi,\u201d a song I\u2019ve never been able to feel, regardless of who\u2019s performing it. But this disc is one you can easily enjoy on several levels. It is perfect to have to set the mood for an intimate dinner party or to experience the purity of well-made and well-engineered music through a set of high-end headphones. <\/p>\n
Scaggs\u2019 honeyed voice still drips into the musical crevices of songs and fills those empty spaces flawlessly. He knows the importance of breathing room and he knows that the voice becomes so much more when it isn\u2019t everything. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":29721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8329],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-41326","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-boz-scaggs","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41326"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}