Reviews

Nisha Smith
Album: It's Getting Late, You'd Better Go Home
Label: Whirlwind
Tracks: 11
Website: https://www.nishlasmith.com/

Jazz has become much more of a vocal music in recent years. Prompted by the likes of Diana Krall there are albums released very few minutes it seems, which revisit the "Great American Songbook" to the point of tedium.

Nishla Smith's voice has inflections of Sarah Vaughan, Etta James and Billie Holiday depending on the song. She plays piano herself and has a small band with soloists on Trumpet, Saxophone and Flute. What sets this album apart is the quality of the songwriting. Bluebird is a delicate delightful song, which adds some harmonies and the flute to her words which look back on her earlier years. Jewel Thief addresses themes of time and change and is a warm song with a variety of found sounds. She adds sound effects though other songs as well, including a popping drink can in the Vaudeville stomp of The Beast.

Hold On To Me is a more singer songwriter style song, with a big musical theatre closing chorus where we finally hear a more original sound to her singing. She says that "the spiritual location for the whole album is a saloon at three o' clock in the morning, just me and the musicians and a handful of listeners." The long, Bill Evansesque piano introduction to The Lark suggests exactly that. Her singing on this again sounds more like her own voice than one drawn from her influences. The trumpets and piano which fill up the middle of the song with a dense wall of sound adds another dimension to her music. This is also the song where her roots in musical theatre are most obvious.

Perfect and Same Stars both include clocks as their ambient sounds although the intimacy of the former gives way to a big chorus in the latter. The brief closing title song takes us back to that 3am bar as the staff prepare to shut up for the night.

When Nishla Smith allows her own voice to shine, most of the second half of this album, she shows herself to be a fine singer. Her songs are insightful and have a quality that is sorely lacking in most Jazz based music. Her producer could do worse than play her some of Nerina Pallot's albums to see what the possibilities of this type of ballad-based music are, and that building her own voice could see her turn in an album that beyond just good, as this one is, could be truly exceptional.

Tim Martin

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