{"id":3834,"date":"2014-05-20T20:01:55","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=3834"},"modified":"2014-05-20T20:20:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:20:29","slug":"color-this-your-favorite-jackie-allen-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=3834","title":{"rendered":"Color this your favorite Jackie Allen album"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"download\"\"jackie<\/p>\n

Jackie Allen — My Favorite Color (Avant Bass) CD review<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Saturday May 24, 7pm<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

“My Favorite Color” cd release party<\/strong>, $10 cover<\/h4>\n

Jazz Gallery Center For The Arts
\n926 E. Center St.
\nMilwaukee, WI<\/h3>\n

(414)-374-4722<\/a><\/h3>\n

info@riverwestart.org<\/a><\/h4>\n

-all ages welcome<\/strong>–
\nJohn Moulder guitar, Hans Sturm bass, Dane Richeson, drums<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Milwaukee-born singer Jackie Allen brings to mind a bramble bush in autumn. You hear a delicate balance of songs imbued with painful confession, as if her voice carries the slight tinge of spiritual bloodletting. It\u2019s probably her best album to date.<\/p>\n

She has ripened into a mature artistic interpreter, without losing the youthful elan that always gave her a special power. Circumstances compelled her to give this record a full six years in the making. Time was on her side.<\/p>\n

The core of the album is a sequence of three extraordinary songs, beginning with the George Gershwin masterpiece \u201cMy Man\u2019s Gone Now\u201d from Porgy & Bess<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Allen dips into mournful minor-key mode like a woman bereft. Her notes seem to melt in abject sorrow, at once strange and gorgeous. This emotional gravity allows her to ride the difficult tonality, a classic case of form following function, ably framed by bassist Hans Sturm\u2019s arco solo, which recalls the magnificence of Richard Davis. \u201cGone\u201d feels like\u00a0 spiritual desolation and yet it holds out for \u201cthe journey to the promised land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Allen begins to reflect, in the ensuing \u201cBlame it on My Youth,\u201d an ode to the reckless heart and to growth that life might afford.<\/p>\n

Here, and elsewhere, Allen\u2019s elastic phrasing and warm texture compares to Tony Bennett at his best. She plumbs whole notes like someone slowly discovering the inside of her soul. Therein lies plenty: the sense of lost innocence, bruised hope, confusion, redemption: \u201cI was like a broken toy, you preferred to throw away\u2026 So don\u2019t blame it on my heart, blame it on my youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third of this stunning threesome is the most improbable and startling and perhaps the crux of the matter, for the risks taken, the human courage found in facing life\u2019s worst. This is Jimi Hendrix\u2019s psychedelic cauldron \u201cManic-Depression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen turns the vintage electronica into a plugged-in Miles Davis aura, but retains her own sense of psychological colors and fragmentation. Guitarist John Moulder puts his own twist on the Hendrix legacy which is a brand of jazz on his own terms, finding its own truths. Throughout the record, the accompanists play as one, and as originals. Pianist Ben Lewis uses sonic space like a wizard on \u201cYouth\u201d and does a slow-motion sashay on \u201cSleepin\u2019 Bee\u201d like a droll comic.<\/p>\n

Allen\u2019s favorite color seems to be blue yet this is a multi-hued recording and hardly devoid of verve or fun. Her sensibility is obvious in \u201cBorn to be Blue\u201d and \u201cMercy, Mercy, Mercy,\u201d but never pushy. Doing a sparkling Burt Bacharach song like \u201cA House is not a Home\u201d is another stroke of brilliance. For all its tenderness her interpretation brims with the power of art and, in this recording, the power of the blues. That humble genre is often underestimated, but Allen proves that the power of the blues comes in many of her favorite hues.<\/p>\n

Here’s Allen’s upcoming tour schedule and a video of Allen teaching NPR’s Garrison Keillor how to sing a torch song:\u00a0http:\/\/www.jackieallen.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CD cover courtesy Matt Ellwood photography<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jackie Allen — My Favorite Color (Avant Bass) CD review   Saturday May 24, 7pm “My Favorite Color” cd release party, $10 cover Jazz Gallery Center For The Arts 926 E. Center St. Milwaukee, WI (414)-374-4722 info@riverwestart.org -all ages welcome– … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-ZQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3834"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3854,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834\/revisions\/3854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}