Cassandra Wilson's swinging for her own creative fences this time. The sultry, gentle, acoustic guitars on her last five recordings have been largely jettisoned for a more keyboard-and percussion -friendly approach -- which includes lots of programming and loops. To that end, she's enlisted flavor-of-the-year producer
T-Bone Burnett and keyboardist
Keith Ciancia. This pair hired a stellar group of players that include drummer
Jim Keltner, bassist
Reginald Veal (a near-constant here), guitarists
Colin Linden and
Marc Ribot, and programming whiz
Mike Elizondo.
Mike Piersante plays "keypercussion" (read: drum loops),
Jay Bellerose and
Bill Maxwell also contribute kit work.
Keb Mo' guests on a track. Ever since signing to Blue Note,
Wilson's walked a razor-wire between blues, pop, and jazz, but her recordings have always been intimate affairs whether she was singing songs by
Robert Johnson or
Van Morrison. While she does preserve a degree of that intimacy here, some of it has fallen by the wayside in favor of the near-constant presence of drum loops, with subtle samples dropped in giving the entire proceeding a slightly more urban feel. A startling example is "Go to Mexico," where a percussion loop and the vocal chant from
the Wild Tchapitoulas "Hey Pocky A-Way," are directly sampled with new words and instrumentation layered over the top -- including
Veal copying the bassline. In addition,
Wilson sings in a voice not really heard from her before. Intertwined with her trademark, smoky contralto (
Wilson has been deeply influenced by
Abbey Lincoln and
Betty Carter but has become a true song stylist of her own), is a falsetto in the verse that feels like a deliberate attempt at singing "straight" modern pop. The thin, compressed production with her vocal mixed so high above the largely keyboard-driven instrumentation feels forced, at odds with the tune, and nearly sterile. Thankfully, it's the exception rather than the rule on
Thunderbird. The atmospheric keyboard line that introduces her read of
Jakob Dylan and
the Wallflowers' "Closer to You," gives way to
Keltner's softly insistent trip-hop shuffle,
Veal's minimal bassline, and
Ciancia's piano, keyboards, and loops are the working elements here.
Wilson's guitar drifts in under her aching, seductive vocal on the refrain as
Veal subtly anchors her.
Wilson's read of
Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Easy Rider" starts out that way -- with
Linden and
Ribot playing snaky and skeletal for the first two verses. It roars to life about two-and-half-minutes in, fully electric, dirty, nasty, and drenched in slow, deep swamp blues.
Keltner's playing is utterly transfixing here. At a touch over seven minutes, its entrancing dynamics provide a virtual journey though the blues both past and future. The slippery drum loops re-enter on the band-written original "It Would Be So Easy," and here, club music touches pop touches the roots of the blues -- the former two happen because of the instrumentation, the latter is due to
Wilson's instrument, which embodies them all and creates a new and ghostly meld. "Red River Valley" is the album's centerpiece. Accompanied only by
Linden' electric slide guitar, it is full of the desolation of the tune's intent, but framed in the context of the Delta. It's one of two guitar/vocal duets here; the other one, the ballad "Lost," is more late-night
Julie London than
Billie Holiday.
Willie Dixon's "I Want to Be Loved" is wonderful update of the blues, and "Poet" may not hit the Urban Top Ten chart, but it should; it's wondrously soulful, sexy, and glossy. While
Wilson has certainly not lost any of her singular talent for interpreting the Chicago blues through the lens of jazz and pop , she has expanded her palette once more by creating an entirely new bag from which we might hear pop, through the age-old hypnotic, sensual, incantory veil of the blues. ~ Thom Jurek