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Sylvia Rae Tracey

Up From the Skies

Tentoten Records TTTCDS 757

As her choice of non-original material (Jimi Hendrix, Four Tops, Willie Nelson, Stoneflowers) suggests, Sylvia Rae Tracey is not your average jazz-standards singer (the one standard in this selection, 'Nice 'n' Easy, is addressed in an appropriately slinky drawl that owes more to Tom Waits than to Ella Fitzgerald).

Instead, in a voice characterised by unaffected sincerity and occasionally heart-on-sleeve confessional intimacy (her own 'Sad Times', on which she is sensitively backed by John Parricelli), she brings together the work of some of her favourite artists, chief among them Michael Marra (whose acerbic yet tender 'Under the Ullapool Moon' brings Loudon Wainwright's 'Central Square Song' to mind) and Sandy Wright (of the aforementioned Stoneflowers), whose '51st State', a song sparked by an intriguingly ambivalent attitude to US culture, receives a sparky reading from a top-notch band spearheaded by the incisive, bluesy saxophone of Simon Allen.

Also featuring the alternately rollicking and sensitive piano of another of Clark Tracey's regular bandmembers, Zoe Rahman (spelled by Stan Tracey on three tracks), and the characteristically vibrant bass of Arnie Somogyi, all impeccably driven by Tracey himself, this is an amiably approachable and clearly heartfelt album with an appealing after-hours quality to it.