Madeleine Peyroux

In the world of adult pop/jazz crossover artists, Madeleine Peyroux has long been known, somewhat dismissively, as "that girl who sounds like Billie Holiday." Her tone and phrasing are sometimes so close to Lady Day's that when her song, "Don't Wait Too Long," was featured in a Dockers commercials, a lot of people assumed they were hearing Holiday herself. And on her third album, Half the Perfect World, the resemblance is still there -- but for the first time, it's just that, a resemblance, and not quite so uncomfortably close to imitation. As a result, Half the Perfect World is easily Peyroux's most satisfying work to date, and could very likely be the one that catapults her to Norah Jones-like levels of popularity.

As on her last album, Careless Love, Peyroux is paired here with producer Larry Klein and his impeccable group of studio musicians, which includes David Piltch on bass, Jay Bellerose on drums, Dean Parks on guitar and Sam Yahel on piano, Wurlitzer and Hammond organ. Their jazzy, restrained accompaniment fits Peyroux's melancholy, low-key delivery like a glove, giving the album a sort of luminous, autumnal feel that the Starbucks crowd should slurp down like a vanilla latte. That's not to say that the sound is calculated or overtly commercial -- on the contrary, Half the Perfect World has an almost painterly sense of craft that most of today's overproduced adult pop sorely lacks.

Peyroux continues to make smart, risk-taking choices in her material -- here she tackles everything from Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" (made famous by Harry Nilsson) to Tom Waits' "The Heart of Saturday Night" to Charlie Chaplin's "Smile," as well as two songs by one of her favorites, Leonard Cohen. Her only misstep is an overly faithful version of Joni Mitchell's "River," which wastes both a guest vocal by k.d. lang and Peyroux's own talent for careful phrasing and tone -- Mitchell's melodies are too swooping and ornamental for Peyroux to truly make them her own.

Covers aside, the album features four originals that are all varying degrees of brilliant -- thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to the contributions of co-songwriter Jesse Harris, the man responsible for many of Norah Jones' best-loved songs (and for "Don't Wait Too Long"). Opening track "I'm All Right" is the obvious hit, an irresistibly breezy, laugh-so-you-don't-cry paean to a lost lover, but the album's real stunner is "Once in a While," a string-laden ballad that is the most honest and vulnerable work of Peyroux's career.

Billie Holiday resemblance aside, Madeleine Peyroux has grown into one of those singers, like Holiday or Nina Simone or Patsy Cline, who can express a world of emotion in the most understated of deliveries. That gift, and Larry Klein's keen understanding of how to showcase it, elevates Half the Perfect World out of the world of coffeehouse pop and into the upper ranks of the year's best albums. - Andy Hermann

Madeleine Peyroux took significantly less time than the eight years between her debut and its follow-up to release her third album, Half the Perfect World, which finds a more mature -- or at least less vulnerable -- singer, one who chooses to express herself with nuance rather than overtness. Often, like in the opening "I'm All Right" -- one of four original songs -- this aversion to unconcealed emotion works well, playing off the swelling Hammond, the swinging rhythm of the acoustic guitar (contrasting nicely with the hook of "It's all right, I've been lonely before"), and the simple drums. But at other times, like in "A Little Bit" -- which is bluesy and more upbeat and practically screams for an outburst, a growl, something -- her hesitancy instead almost comes across as a flaw, as a fear of fully expressing herself. On "Blue Alert," where Anjani's voice was full and seductive, rife with curling smoke rings and lipstick-stained wineglasses, Peyroux seems desolate and flat and she simplifies the situation too much, though she does fare much better on the other Anjani/Leonard Cohen piece and title track of the album. Here, she changes its perspective, mixing the characters together and sounding beautifully fragile, yet at the same time strong and certain, as she sings about her love. The same can be said for her version of the Johnny Mercer-penned "The Summer Wind," which uses a cleaner, less dramatic arrangement to convey the feeling that, though she's thinking about past events with some nostalgia, she's also able to accept the outcome and move forward with her life. This kind of resignation hangs heavy throughout the entire album, making every song she covers seem sadder than the original. Joni Mitchell's "River," sung with k.d. lang, is slow and heart-wrenching (lang's voice, especially, brings a sweet melancholy to it), and Peyroux's version of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" has a kind of dejected resoluteness that makes you wonder if she can even follow the advice she's singing. This subtlety is two-fold, however. It's so prevalent in the music that it's hard to tell if it's hinting at greater depth or if it's really a protective blanket, an affected timidity to prevent exposure. The delicateness of Half the Perfect World is certainly nice, but Peyroux seems to be using it as a device to hide behind instead of an actual expression of feeling, and so while the album is an overall success, it still leaves questions lingering behind the softly clicking hi-hat, the wandering bass, of when the singer's really going to show herself completely. ~ Marisa Brown, All Music Guide